Ill wind blows bookies good

At four o'clock yesterday afternoon, John White, the Leopardstown manager had the air of a man who could do some damage to a large brandy, or two. Not surprising really considering quite a lot of rapidly-accelerating air had done its best to do as much damage as possible to one of Christmas sport's oldest institutions.

Twenty four hours earlier, Leopardstown's St Stephen's Day race meeting had looked as on as most of the electricity supply to West Cork i.e. not. In the circumstances, yesterday's fixture was as fine a tribute to improvisation as anything Clive Anderson has hosted.

The figures alone were mightily impressive. Some 16,250 people paid through the turnstiles and once in, managed to unload almost £1.2 million into the sweaty grasp of various bookmakers and Tote facilities. The attendance may have been down 750 on last year, but the turnover of the bookmakers alone, at £714,000, was 34 per cent up. Proof that in the windy circumstances, the punting hard men had put their boots on.

Yet the figures don't even hint at the full story. John White didn't sound like he was exaggerating when he described the scene on Christmas Day as "shattering."

He added: "I can only pay tribute to the staff, especially the groundsman Willie Gibbons, because the place was in bits. From six o'clock this morning, we were sawing trees, replacing the tents, everything. Every hurdle on the track had been flattened."

Not surprising then that those early comers to the Ballyogan entrance were met with boulders across the road, obstacles to trespassers which, due to the pressure of time, had yet to be removed. A swift mutter into a walkie-talkie and a JCB arrived to remove them.

According to White, it was just a blip on a day when Leopardstown's new traffic arrangements endured their entrance exam.

"I went out to the car parks after the third race and I didn't hear one complaint. Everything seems to have gone off fantastically well. We had 50 garda on duty including 10 motorcycle police and the flow into the track seems to have been much better," White said.

After the excesses of Christmas Day, much better was not an accurate description of how many in the crowd felt after the first two races however.

The odds on Dudley Do Right got turned over by what seemed only an extended nostril hair by Royal Marine in the opener, while in the second, the 14 to 1 racecourse debutant Lord Dal sailed through to give those lucky few who backed him on the Tote a 40 to 1 winner. The even fewer who forecasted him and Sawa-Id to be second got odds of 1,028 to 1 and are available, at a price obviously, to be touched in awe by those of us who are less fortunate and considerably more jealous.

It wasn't just the ordinary punter who suffered, however. Millionaire businessman and legendary gambler JP McManus was whispered to have piled on to his own horse Khairabar in the Denny Juvenile Hurdle. The favourite's chance seemed to have improved when one of his main rivals, Hamamelis, deposited her rider to the ground at the start, but even allowing for that, Khairabar couldn't catch Charlie Swan on Rainbow Frontier.

The cliche, though, is that wealth cannot buy success on the turf and in the big race, the £35,000 Denny Gold Medal Novice Chase, some credibility seemed to have been breathed into the assertion. Dardjini was bred by the Aga Khan and considering the giant horse's breeding, by Nijinisky out of the Group 1 winner Darara, it's a fair bet that the Aga was thinking more of Derbys and Arc de Triomphe's, rather than jumping races.

Dardjini, however, clearly relishes sailing over the big obstacles and did so to such effect on his first attempt that he landed the £22,750 first prize in some style for his owners, the High Street Racing Syndicate at odds of 100 to 30. "I don't think the Aga Khan had been thinking of this in the first place," grinned the winner's trainer Noel Meade.

Maybe not, but racing encourages adaptability. Dardjini proved that, and despite nature's spectacular display of Christmas flatulence, so did Leopardstown.