TV View: Irish sportswomen take over our telly screens

You’re always a little fearful about declaring a moment to be historic just in case someone with an unhealthy amount of knowledge of sporting facts, stats and the like sends you an email that starts with “Actually......”, before going on to cite a moment that proves your moment wasn’t an historical first at all.

Still, it’s with a steely certainty that it can be declared that history was indeed made at the 2021 Boat Race: it was the first time ever that a crew member sang ‘Óró ‘Sé do bheatha ‘bhaile’ ahead of the contest.

Not that the BBC’s Andrew Cotter seemed to appreciate the import of the moment. “The memory of Caoimhe Dempsey’s singing will not easily fade,” he said, after she had been asked by crew-mate Sophie Paine to croon an Irish tune. That she did, the Wicklow woman giving it socks, but she reserved the bulk of her energy for helping Cambridge see off the challenge of - checks notes - Oxford to win their fourth successive Boat Race.

This one, of course, was a bit different, taking place not on the Thames but on what looked a little bit like a weedy canal in the middle of nowhere. The Great Ouse in Ely, Cambridgeshire, to be exact, but that’s sort of the same thing.

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It was shifted partly for coronavirus reasons, but also because Hammersmith Bridge is in danger of falling down, falling down, so the organisers didn’t want a heap of Barnabys, Marmadukes, Montagues and Hugos tumbling in to the river as the race passed underneath.

If any of them dared to turn up to spectate at the Ouse race, which began, as we suspected it would, just north of the Prickwillow Road bridge, they faced being fined £200, but so remote did the spot appear to be, it’s unlikely it’s even been Googled Mapped yet.

It proved to be a glorious day for Cambridge who completed a boy-girl double, Matthew Pinsent’s attempts to interview the losing Oxford boys’ crew proving less than successful, all of them way too gutted to speak. Clare Balding felt for them. “If you don’t win, you get nothing from it, you’ve just wasted your life,” she told James Cracknell, whose response was along the lines of “um......”.

There were, as it turned out, Irish sportswomen all over all telly screens the past few days, along with Dempsey there was Leona Maguire at the ANA Inspiration, whose early sparkling battle with Patty Tavatanakit had to have been history's first tussle between Ballyconnell, Co Cavan and Bangkok, Co Thailand, and Olivia Mehaffey at the Augusta National Women's Amateur.

And then we had Ruby Walsh's chat with Rachael Blackmore during RTE's coverage from Fairyhouse on Sunday, the assumption being that she'd still be atop Cloud Nine after her Cheltenham exploits. Instead, her mind was fixed on her runners-up spot in the Gold Cup.

“I had the choice of the two horses, I picked the wrong one, I don’t know if there’s a word in the dictionary to describe that feeling..... yeah, it’s just hard. It’s hard.”

Andy McNamara tried to explain to us non-sporting-elite-people why Blackmore was focussed on the one that got away, rather than the six that didn’t. “You can’t become a great sportsperson like she is, you can’t be happy out, unless you’re that way when you get beaten. It will gnaw at her forever, but that will push her on and make her better again.”

Ted Walsh agreed, “that’s sport”, but saluted the overall Irish effort at Cheltenham. “The English looked as if they’d abandoned ship and Covid had taken over the whole lot of them!”

He doffed his cap, too, to Cathal McHugh and Kevin Crean, part-owners of the Shark Hanlon-trained Skyace who cost a mere £600. Brian Gleeson had a Zoomy chat with them ahead of the Grade One Irish Stallion Farms Mares Novice Hurdle, and while they appeared to be perfectly fine lads, the fact that they’d just had a game of golf and then headed to McGettigan’s pub in Ajman in the United Arab Emirates to watch the race might have left you feeling sufficiently bitter to wish Skyace had been turned back at checkpoint near Fairyhouse for breaching the 5km rule.

Skyace won. The lads were ecstatic. Pints galore. Well for bloody some.

Ted, meanwhile, wanted to send happy birthday good wishes to trainer Mouse Morris. “Seventy today - and he looks every day of it.”