Rachael Blackmore© Photo Healy Racing
The National Hunt trainers championship doesn't appear like providing a winter long narrative this season. Willie Mullins looks to have got too big a jump on his rival Gordon Elliott for that. It's our good fortune then that Rachael Blackmore's pursuit of the jockey's title can provide an alternative winter hook. Not only is it keeping racing enthralled but it offers an opportunity for a truly landmark sporting story to unfold before us.
If Blackmore pays any attention to such speculation it probably provokes little but exasperation. When serious injury always lurks at the next obstacle it doesn't leave much mental energy left for conjecture. And whatever happens there's little doubt the 29 year old former champion conditional would prefer her talent and achievements to be perceived purely on their own merits.
However she's much too bright an individual not to realise how her pioneering professional career inevitably gets interpreted in the wider context of gender. It would be great if a person's sex didn't matter in the racing game. But evidence of prejudice runs through the sport's history. It's what makes Blackmore's story so potentially momentous.
A touch of that has lingered through the first half of the season as Blackmore sped from the blocks to top the championship table. Once the big boys started getting serious normal service would resume seemed to be a widespread attitude. Well we're past halfway and Blackmore is still right in the mix with 56 winners and only Paul Townend ahead of her. She isn't going away you know.
And she isn't primarily because of Michael O'Leary's patronage. As has been outlined here before, the bridge between talent and accomplishment is usually opportunity. Five years ago Blackmore drew a blank for the season off just 28 rides. During the 2015-16 season she had just half a dozen winners from 170 rides. Given the chance though her talent has come through.
It illustrates once again how such a self-consciously tough game is so fashion-led. But all any rider can do is make the most of opportunities presented. The scale of Blackmore's accomplishments though has to be judged on how much more difficult it has historically been for female riders to secure such opportunity. So what's happening this season is genuinely groundbreaking
Of course, as corporate advertisements always warn, the value of investments can fall as well as rise, something that certainly seems to be the case when it comes to the Ryanair boss's investment in jockeys.
But right now O'Leary shapes as the most vital component to Blackmore's title challenge. And one can envisage how proving instrumental to such a ground-breaking accomplishment as Blackmore becoming the first woman to be crowned champion professional jumps jockey might encourage Gigginstown's competitive instincts.
If she keeps delivering for them then they can deliver her perhaps a first Grade One winner and a first Cheltenham festival success in March. These are significant accomplishments in any rider's career. But the intriguing overall thread is how they might prove stepping stones towards a truly landmark moment, a woman crowned champion in the toughest sport of all.
Bookmakers rate Blackmore's chances at just 9-2. She's third favourite behind Townend and Davy Russell. The layers appear to be calculating how Ruby Walsh's presence means he rather than Townend gets the pick of the Mullins team through the winter. And Russell won't have the pick of De Bromhead's this time.
Of course one significant injury could make title talk redundant. There are any number of pieces that need to fall into place. But the fates could also swing Blackmore's way too. That might provide as spectacular a story as racing has ever seen, with hopefully one long-term payoff for all concerned being that the gender prism can get put to the side.
Blackmore's seasonal tally would have been one greater had Cuneo not been thrown out by the stewards at Punchestown on Sunday. It was a dramatic contest that wound up with the 'second' getting the race despite not being hampered. It prompted a lot of comment but one gauge of Blackmore's impact was an absence of idiotic commentary about female jockeys and 'strength.'
Cuneo chucked the race away when he cannoned into Relegate after the last flight. He looked far from straightforward despite having his fifth career start. That Relegate was the one hampered meant a fortunate win for Satoshi but the stewards outcome was entirely logical.
Relegate's chances were clearly interfered with. For most observers the likelihood was probably that she wouldn't have got past Cuneo anyway. But there was no way of knowing for sure and it's usually better that the victim rather than the transgressor gets the benefit of any doubt.
The stewards were also in action after Samcro's late withdrawal from the Morgiana Hurdle. That the ground description never wavered over the weekend from 'good and good to yielding in places' on the hurdles track meant it was inevitable Samcro's trainer Gordon Elliott had to appear before the stewards. Almost as inevitable was that such an appearance was essentially a cosmetic exercise.
Elliott had been publicly consistent throughout the week about his ground concerns for Samcro. Some will no doubt argue that declaring the horse on the same official going he was supposed to run on two days later meant the trainer should have been penalised. The stewards however accepted Elliott's explanation that he felt it in the horse's best interests.
In an academic sense Elliott probably couldn't have complained if he had been fined. Except such rules can only be enforced in a practical environment often far removed from theory, especially when it comes to the vagaries of the Irish weather. This looked a case of common sense winning out.
As for the race itself, with Samcro and Supasundae missing because of ground conditions, it turned into a Grade One anti-climax. Faugheen at two miles now looks a pale shadow of what he was in his pomp. Sharjah might be underestimated but just as likely is that he benefitted from being in the place in the right race in the right time.
In fact despite Samcro not lining up, Sharjah's victory will more than anything probably rejuvenate speculation about the Gigginstown star's Champion Hurdle chances considering Down Royal form from earlier this month.
The most taking Sunday Punchestown performance of all though could wind up being Malone Road's impressive bumper defeat of Mt Leinster. A £325,000 price tag was always going to make Cheveley Park's purchase worthy of attention. But if he was good at Down Royal then he looked a hugely exciting prospect at the weekend.
