Festival specialist gambling on Plan B Cheltenham countdown

Interview with Edward O'Grady/RACING: Brian O'Connor talks to a Festival legend about the disruption to his preparations

Edward O'Grady knows that just three days will tell if three months of winging it has been worthwhile.

One would think that a man who has trained 16 Festival winners, more than double the score of any other current Irish trainer, could not be surprised by the Cheltenham experience, but try telling that to the 53-year-old.

As befits his reputation as a Festival specialist, O'Grady holds the key to Irish hopes in the novice hurdle events. Back In Front is favourite for the Supreme Novices', and Pizarro might yet become the bookies' nightmare in the SunAlliance.

But this has been no blessed path to glorious fulfilment in the spring. Instead, you get the feeling O'Grady wouldn't shirk at the idea of a round of applause for getting these horses to Cheltenham at all.

Go back to mid-December and it's easy to see why. Pizarro was beaten for the first and only time in his six-race career at Navan and didn't like the taste. Mind you, who would? Just imagine having a chesty cough and all that goes with that: then picture having to run for two and a half miles when feeling like death warmed up. The wonder is that Pizarro struggled home well enough to be third.

Last year's Festival Bumper winner was scoped afterwards and a whole lot of mucus said hello. Then Back In Front got a dose, then Sheltering. Pretty soon an entire season looked like going down the toilet. It was time to think again.

"A lot of thought and effort has gone into this," he says. "I would have preferred to go down the designated, normal routes, at Christmas and so on, but the ball wasn't bouncing for me. So the game plan has been altered. We'll find out soon if it's been the correct one."

The obvious question as to what he suspects might happen to Plan B doesn't contain much reassurance for those Pizarro and Back In Front fans.

"I would say hopeful rather than confident. It's a subjective thing. I hope we're right. It's not like weighing a stone of potatoes. It's not an exact science. And even if they don't win it doesn't mean the course we've taken has been incorrect. Things can go wrong for any number of reasons," O'Grady declares.

In a game full of shifty-eyed little men who could sweet talk most substances into Shinola, O'Grady's blunt analysis can be a refreshing change.

The Tipperary trainer brings an intelligence to the game that some of his colleagues often choose to interpret as arrogance. O'Grady in turn leaves one in little doubt about the amount of sleep he loses over that.

Sometimes grumpy, often charming, always interesting, the O'Grady experience must be eventful on the run-up to the year's most important meeting.

"Stress? Never: I am an absolute poppet to live with!"

Nail him down on the matter, though, and it's clear training a fancied Cheltenham runner must be as efficient a weight loss method as anything to do with a gym.

"It is a terribly stressful time, the time of the year when things are most fraught. But one must try and keep an air of normality even though things are abnormal.

"And it doesn't get better with age. The thing is now that it is so intensely competitive. When I was starting out there was a lot less hassle. The stakes are very high now. We're very lucky in Ireland in that it's Christmas every weekend because of the tremendous prizemoney. But the competition is intense."

It's a different game to when he first ventured to Cheltenham. The pressures of being in charge existed all too well, but the hype machine hadn't quite kicked into top gear as Mr Midland passed the 1974 National Hunt Chase winning post.

Four years later Golden Cygnet won the Supreme Novices' Hurdle and looked a horse to compare with anything that had come up that Cheltenham hill. Gnarled old cynics mentioned his name alongside Arkle's and didn't blush while doing it. Golden Cygnet was the sort of horse trainers dream about, then wake up and feel foolish for being fanciful. One shudders to think how the vastly expanded modern media machine would have gobbled up his story now.

"The whole corporate and press side of things at the Festival has got pretty enormous these days," O'Grady says. "As a professional, to say it has gone over the top would be wrong because it is good for the game and good for National Hunt racing, but still . . ."

As for Golden Cygnet, O'Grady insists time has allowed the memories to be positive, dulling the pain of the horse's fatal fall later that season.

"One can choose to look at the bright side or the sad side. If you keep looking at the sad side, you would turn into a manic-depressive, end up in the place with the big walls. I know we did everything right with him. It was sad to see such potential unfulfilled, but we were lucky to have him at all," he considers.

That determination to look on the upside has served him well more often than the 16 Festival winners might suggest. It's understandable the good days stay at the front of the mind, but the bad ones are safely tucked away and pulled out whenever expectations get too high.

"It all comes down to one day, and while the best horse normally wins, it doesn't always," O'Grady declares, and thinks back to his own list of "what might have beens".

"Jack Of Trumps and Deep Gale both ran in the four mile National Hunt Chase, both were superb jumpers and both fell. They were probably the best ever to run in it but it didn't work out. There was also a horse called Kilmakilloge who was a hot favourite and we were convinced he was got at. It was never proven, but we had our suspicions. He was never the same again after that."

O'Grady doesn't even need to mention Nick Dundee's third-last fall in the SunAlliance, which still ranks as one of the great Festival disappointments. No wonder caution is his by-word.

"Apart from ability, a horse has got to be pretty well outstanding to get up that hill. But it is such a place for the day. I look at it like a guy with a yearling at the sales. He has one day to click, one day to produce."

Even though the Festival has grown into a different commercial beast than he knew, there is enough of the spirit still there to quicken O'Grady's pulse.

"My father had a good record there. I remember being with him when Kinloch Brae looked like winning the Gold Cup (1970) only to fall at the third last. He was, sadly, dead when Mr Midland won so it was emotionally big for me. It was like starting back on something he had begun."

O'Grady has come a long way since then. Just two Irish men in Cheltenham history have trained more winners, and Tom Dreaper and Vincent O'Brien qualify as genuine legends.

On four previous occasions he has come back with a couple of winners under his belt. The ammunition is there for something similar to happen again - if O'Grady has got it right. It's worth betting he has.