WAR OF ATTRITION'S FINAL RACE: BRIAN O'CONNORcontends that the retirement of the popular former Gold Cup winner somehow seems apt now in our straitened circumstances

HOW APPROPRIATE it is that, in the midst of such social and economic gloom, War Of Attrition will have his last race at next week’s Punchestown festival. The horse that perhaps epitomised Irish racing’s Tiger years doesn’t really fit into our new environment of defeat, despair and depression.

He’s eleven now, entering the veteran stage of a racehorse’s life, but most steeplechasers carry on for another year if they’re fit enough and War Of Attrition is that.

But without wishing to get all dewy-eyed and anthropomorphic about it, it feels right that he’s exiting now.

This was the horse that led home an Irish 1-2-3 in the 2006 Gold Cup, the year the Tiger roared loudest and longest in the history of Cheltenham, and when Michael O’Leary’s swaggering confidence seemed to embody the age.

For a lot of us, those years of supposed indulgence consisted of nothing more than a desperate search for an affordable house and a new-found familiarity with lattes. Certainly the current pagan wailing about paying for years of cocaine-addled decadence with a new era of deprivation rings hollow to the majority.

But in purely racing terms there’s no getting away from the fact that there was a golden age that is now disappearing down the toilet quicker than a supermodel’s breakfast.

Attendances are shot to hell, betting is heading offshore the same way as our business elite and finding owners that can pay on time is like striking lucky on the Lotto.

During the boom years, Irish people started to enjoy their racing from the comfort of the owners and trainers bar, leaving work at the stable coalface to those from Ukraine, Brazil and elsewhere. Go into any yard now and there are more familiar accents cursing an ever-decreasing number of four-legged occupants.

It’s been a quick and steep fall and the hope next week will be that War Of Attrition can negotiate one more race without any kind of spill of his own and then ride off into retirement’s sunset.

Just once in his 34-race career to date has War Of Attrition crashed out and that was in his very first point-to-point at Horse Jockey in March 2003. The four- year-old embryonic star was clear at the last when falling. It would never happen again but a horse that falls in a point-to-point is hardly a ‘must-have’ for any potential buyer.

Yet Michael O’Leary, and his brother Eddie who oversees the Ryanair boss’s bloodstock interests, had bought the horse bred by Bríd Murphy from Ger Hourigan within a week of that tumble. Already named he became the first horse Mouse Morris trained for O’Leary.

“I think he must have been only the fourth or fifth horse I ever bought,” Michael O’Leary remembers. “And I suppose everything has flowed from him – straight down the money pit!”

O’Leary is famous for his straight-talking but the man who has revolutionised the airline industry also has a rare ability to reinvent how he’s perceived. After all, it’s not so long since the fervent supporter of market economics was being portrayed as a workers’ champion over the notorious Hangar 6.

But beneath the blustering PR antics and face-twisting photo op’s, there is no getting away from O’Leary’s love of National Hunt racing, and indeed of racehorses. It would require dental torture of the “Is It Safe” variety to get him to admit it, but one horse in particular might even – occasionally – veer O’Leary towards the realm of sentiment.

Morris for one is convinced War Of Attrition is being retired so his owner can simply look out at him from his Co Westmeath home. O’Leary characteristically presents a more hard-nosed facade but it is fair to say that the veteran star is unlikely to want for anything.

“The plan is that he might go hunting for two or three seasons but only if we can get someone good to ride him. I’ve already had a couple of people on wanting him for show classes at the RDS and maybe he could go back to Cheltenham sometimes for those past-champion parades.

“But I’d like him to be fit and healthy for that. What I don’t want is to just throw him out in a field and watch him getting fat – like his owner and trainer.

“Physically I suppose he could go on racing but why would he? He’s not as good as he was and I don’t want him dragging his bum around the place in handicaps. What’s happened is that he has won two good hurdle races this season and it would be good if he could retire on that sort of high,” added O’Leary.

War Of Attrition has been something of a revelation this winter, being revitalised by reverting to hurdles after looking to fall out of love with jumping fences. A pair of Grade Two wins earned him a last trip to Cheltenham where he was prominent for a long way in the World Hurdle before not unreasonably fading behind his younger rivals.

Morris is keen to make his last race over fences, blaming some poor earlier form to slight back problems that have now been ironed out. That would mean an appearance in the Guinness Gold Cup on Wednesday, with an alternative in the following day’s Ladbrokes World Series Hurdle.

For such an accomplished runner it may seem odd that a sense of ‘what if’ hangs around War Of Attrition but it is there. Back-to-back Gold Cups looked a distinct possibility in 2007 but two weeks before the race, Morris felt some dreaded heat in a leg. Coming less than 24 hours after the death of his mother, Lady Killanin, it was a terrible blow to the trainer.

“Mouse was in a terrible heap; he was devastated by his mother’s death obviously but he was probably even more devastated by the news of the horse, knowing him,” O’Leary later remembered.

It was almost two years before War Of Attrition ran again and the old cliche about them never coming back quite as good looked to come true.

Conor O’Dwyer had retired before War returned to action but the veteran rider remains convinced that the 2007 Gold Cup was his for the taking despite the emerging force that was Kauto Star ultimately winning that year.

“Some will say it wasn’t the greatest Gold Cup that he won but he could only beat what was put in front of him and I think it is still the second-fastest run Gold Cup of all,” Morris says.

“I suppose we will never know what he might have done if he hadn’t got injured but you can’t think like that. This is a great game for ‘what ifs’. The thing is he owes us nothing.”

The job the trainer has done in getting War Of Attrition back into the sort of shape to rejuvenate his career this season cannot be underestimated and a Cheltenham swansong last month left Morris surprised at the depth of affection for the old horse.

“Going down the walkway out on to the track it was amazing how many English people made a point of telling me how great it was to see him back,” he says.

“The two races he has won he beat the favourite and still got a great reception. And that was great to see; it shows it’s not all about money.”

In the current environment, any opportunity to draw attention away from our penury should be cherished. So Punchestown has got lucky in more than one way.