Eight up at halfway looks like Irish benefit

DAY TWO REVIEW:AFTER FOUR more Irish-trained winners on day two of Cheltenham 2009, a wag was heard to predict a white flag from the home team anytime soon – and he might have been only half-joking.

In fact, what had been forecast to be a recession-coated gloom-fest has instead morphed into an Irish benefit that threatens to turn into the most numerically successful festival ever. The 2006 tally of 10 is the record and, at halfway, only three more winners will break it.

Master Minded kept a British stranglehold secure on another of the championship races by landing the Champion Chase yesterday, but at a time when staring into the future can be a wincing torture, there is ample evidence of a vintage crop of Irish talent about to tackle their elders in 2010.

Or maybe that should be a vintage crop of Willie Mullins-trained novice talent. The champion trainer was out of luck with his eight-strong team in a bumper, won in brilliant style by Dunguib. But saddling both Mikael d’Haguenet and Cooldine will have dulled that pain.

Mikael d’Haguenet had already earned the sobriquet “machine” from the usually sober-minded Ruby Walsh even before he lined up for the Ballymore Properties Novice Hurdle. After a resounding defeat of Karabak and Diamond Harry, the jockey reached for another phrase and came up with “a very special horse”.

He’s an unusual animal, too, as pre-race fears about the drying ground proved unfounded.

“He has had a huge, high knee action all winter on soft ground, but today he had a long, low action,” Mullins said. “It’s as if he has changed his stride, and I’ve never seen another horse do that.

“Ruby said after he won at Naas he might one day win a Gold Cup and I don’t see any reason to change that view.

“He’s probably my best chance of having a Gold Cup horse,” added Mullins.

That Gold Cup comment took on even greater significance just 35 minutes later as Cooldine ran out such an authoritative winner of this year’s RSA that Ladbrokes make him just 6 to 1 to win the 2010 Gold Cup.

Mullins’s belief that the Archie O’Leary-owned horse was his best chance of the day looked to be punctured just 90 minutes before the race as Cooldine was lame and standing on just three legs.

“One of his shoes was too tight and a nail was pressing,” the trainer said. “The course farrier managed to glue a new shoe on him and filled the holes with polyfilla. We then put some ice on for an hour. Ruby said he was slightly feeling it on the concrete but was fine once he got out on to the track.”

In terms of future Cheltenham potential, though, Dunguib takes a back seat to nothing as he destroyed a huge field to win the bumper by 10 lengths in a performance that harked back to Florida Pearl’s display in the same race in 1998.

Amateur jockey Brian O’Connell had had his first ride in Britain just hours earlier in the National Hunt Chase, won by Tricky Trickster. But up against the likes of Walsh, McCoy and Smullen, he threaded the heavily-backed second favourite through the pack to win with authority.

“That was awesome. Once he hit the front he really quickened up,” said Philip Fenton, who was training his first winner at a festival at which he had had success as a jockey.

There was also a Cheltenham first for Paddy Flood, who guided Tom Taaffe’s Ninetieth Minute to an emotional success in the Coral Cup.

The 22-year-old jockey has battled back from alcohol problems to become one of Ireland’s leading jockeys, with an Irish National on Hear The Echo already under his belt.

“People say winning here is the best feeling ever, but you don’t understand until it happens,” he said.

“I can’t describe the feeling. It’s just – wow!”

However, the dangers of complacency are always rife at Cheltenham, and among all yesterday’s gambles the one that really got away was Alexander Severus, who could finish only fourth in the Fred Winter behind Silk Affair.

It was a rare sour note for Ireland on what is becoming a festival to remember.