Everyone meets the world in their own way, peering through their own goggles. The winter was long and wet for everybody but while you were itching with cabin fever and getting cranky at the kids’ matches being called off for the 10th week in a row, racing people had higher questions in mind.
Questions such as: is Irish winter form worth a damn considering the ground at Cheltenham is going to be firm as an airport runway in comparison? Why are they still running that stupid ad with Colm Meaney and Peter Crouch? And is it worth selling your first-born kid to snag accommodation for the week?
While we wait and wonder, here are seven Cheltenham storylines that have nothing to do with betting.
1. Waterford waiting on I’ll Sort That
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“It’s probably like a Junior C player being allowed to play in an All-Ireland,” said Declan Queally, after riding I’ll Sort That to his first Grade One victory at Naas in January. The Waterford trainer and jockey has the county behind him as he brings a live chance to the festival, almost certainly in the Turners Novices’ Hurdle on Wednesday. The horse cost €3,500 and has returned over €100,000 so far. Cheltenham’s capacity for dreamers hasn’t overflowed just yet.
2. Who’s the next female star?
Rachael Blackmore’s retirement means it is entirely possible that this will be the first Cheltenham festival since 2011 with no winner ridden by a female jockey. Nina Carberry flew the flag alone each year between 2012 and 2016. Lisa O’Neill, Gina Andrews and Bryony Frost all won races in 2017 and the likes of Lizzie Kelly, Bridget Andrews, Maxine O’Sullivan, Jody Townend and Lucy Turner have all joined Blackmore in the years since. Blackmore rode 18 festival winners – never have there been bigger boots to fill.
3. The English are coming (back). Maybe.
There hasn’t been a close Prestbury Cup – the makey-uppy scoreboard between English and Irish winners – since 2019 and you have to go back to 2015 for the last time the Brits held sway. But there are noises that it might be closer this year.
“It’s been a long time coming to a point where we think we can be competitive,” said English trainer Ben Pauling recently. “The Prestbury Cup – who’s going to win it? More than likely it’ll be the Irish, but it might only be by two or three and not 15.”
Look, nobody said they were confident noises, okay?
4. Harry Redknapp and the Gold Cup
That said, nobody would be shocked if there was an English-trained winner of the Gold Cup. It’s still up in the air as to whether Fact To File (who looks the best Irish contender) will go to the race or duck it for the easier Ryanair on Thursday. But one way or the other, Harry Redknapp’s The Jukebox Man will be favourite or close to it when the tapes go up. No winner all week would be more likely to cut through to the general public than if there are pictures of ‘Appy ‘Arry ‘olding the Gold Cup come Friday.
5. Tower Power
Harry won’t have it all his own way though. It has become a truism of the preview circuit that this is the most open Gold Cup in years, with very little running that can be ruled out. By far the most fun result would be a win for Spillane’s Tower, trained by Jimmy Mangan in the village of Conna, Co Cork. How the hell can it be 23 years since Mangan won the Grand National with Monty’s Pass? The veteran trainer is 70 now and he has a classy animal in Spillane’s Tower. Watch out for his purple and yellow beanie, the colours of his local GAA club St Catherine’s.
6. The Hartys and the hankies
Cheltenham does fairytales like no other sporting arena. Eddie Harty snr died just last month at the grand old age of 88. It was especially poignant as the former Cheltenham-winning trainer and Grand National-winning jockey only lost his wife Patricia a week previously.
And now his son Eddie and Grandson Patrick bring Irish Panther to the festival, probably in the Arkle but possibly even running as a novice in the Champion Chase. Wherever it goes, it will have a chance – in a weird sort of way, there seems less to beat in the senior race than in the novice one. Either way, there won’t be a dry eye, etc.
7. It’s still a place for the small man
That’s the thing about Cheltenham. The headlines will all be about Willie and Gordon, Townend and Kennedy, JP and Mick O’Leary. And that’s all grand. But it’s for the Hartys and the Queallys and the Mangans too. There’s still a place for them.
Just as there is for Tom Cooper, who tasted success back in the 2000s with Total Enjoyment and Forpadydeplasterer and this year brings Shuttle Diplomacy (Turners, Wednesday) and Amen Kate (Mares’ Novice, Thursday).
Cooper would have had a serious runner in the Champion Bumper too, but for Saint Clovis’s untimely death a few weeks back. A small yard striking out from rural Kerry, taking a swing at the big boys on the grandest stage of them all. And travelling with genuine hope in their hearts.
There’s nothing in sport like it.
