Don Poli is a sound jumper© Photo Healy Racing
It is two months exactly until Don Poli wins the Gold Cup - just the sort of speculative rubbish his owner publicly scorns but which Michael O’Leary must also privately realise is the stuff that keeps the whole shooting match going. So with everyone else getting their ante-post tuppence in, and the Cheltenham countdown gathering pace all the time, here’s why Don Poli and the others will win the festival’s championship contests - theoretically.
Gold Cup: If cheek-pieces are being entertained for Don Cossack, then some extra furry ones are surely an option for Don Poli, a horse many of us believe as capable of taking the mickey as he is of finally securing Willie Mullins that elusive ‘blue-riband.’
Many won’t have him form-wise and there is no way that Lexus performance will do at Cheltenham. But it’s surely no coincidence his best performance last season was at the festival and time hasn’t diluted the impression in the aftermath of that RSA that Mullins reckoned this one of his contenders best suited to the Gold Cup challenge.
Vautour has brilliance but could we be talking another Florida Pearl in terms of that final quarter mile up the hill while Djakadam hasn’t really captured the public imagination although that Durkan performance looked on another level again compared to what he’d done previously.
Significantly though Mullins didn’t look fazed in the slightest after the Lexus, merely emphasising how confidence is required for Don Poli. His own confidence appears rock-solid, so primed again for the big day, and maybe carrying headgear, we will finally get to see what’s hiding in the tank when it counts most.
Champion Hurdle: There might even be more in the Faugheen tank too and while this outstanding horse is the most likely winner he is priced accordingly. So, on the basis of a hiccup the value alternative has to be Identity Thief rather than any of the Mullins supporting cast.
Just 13 months after winning his debut, Henry De Bromhead’s runner had Nichols Canyon — famously the one horse to beat Faugheen — at full stretch and arguably might have won if Bryan Cooper had been a bit sharper on the turn-in. That represented another massive step-up for a hugely improved horse and there is no knowing when that improvement will stop. Missing the Irish Champion and going straight to Cheltenham is a plus.
Champion Chase: Un De Sceaux begs to be taken on and the one horse you’d love to take him on with is Vautour. But even if that doesn’t happen, there’s another Mullins horse lurking at a big price — Felix Yonger.
On all known form he’s just a tad off the top but it’s not unknown for Un De Sceaux to blunder, both Sprinter Sacre and Sire De Grugy are vulnerable, while Dodging Bullets hasn’t been seen at all this season. And of those left 25-1 about a Grade 1 winner who surprised many with the way he managed to overcome very testing ground at Navan looks tempting.
World Hurdle: If the best is yet to come with Felix Yonger and Identity Thief then it’s a similar case with Thistlecrack which, when you consider he’s already favourite and boasts the best form of the season, makes his chance hard to ignore. Plenty will tell you Vroum Vroum Mag is a major factor. But it is 23 years since a mare has won. Even if he is favourite, Thistlecrack looks a tough enough proposition to park any originality to the side.
So there you go: at current odds that’s 8,872/1. Don’t spend it all in one place, and remember me in your prayers.
This Wednesday sees the Horse Racing Ireland Bill continue its glacial progress through the Oireachtas and Turf Club hopes for significant amendments to the legislation look to have been disappointed. In the short term that leaves the regulatory body depending on an assortment of TD’s and Senators to try and make some late adjustments and in the longer term facing the possibility of having to follow through on previous legal threats.
What seems clear is they can hope for little give directly from a Department of Agriculture seemingly continually at odds with the Turf Club in principle and even a cursory glance at the Bill reveals an apparent willingness to hobble the regulatory body’s role on a practical day to day basis too.
No doubt some very clever legal minds have pored over the text but even an inexpert eye can spot how the Sanctions & Appeals section potentially involves logistically disastrous formal hearings into every minute or routine disciplinary procedure.
As it currently stands, the legislation appears to demand hearings into everything from a €50 slap on the wrist to much worse, which no doubt makes legal sense but is all but unworkable at the coalface. Even imposing a standard €200 fine for a non-runner excuse is potentially a new red-tape chore with the penalised person required to appear in person before officials, resulting in little more than a bigger logistical workload for little purpose other than the increased production of paperwork.
The Department has apparently been repeatedly informed of these potential problems and yet nothing has changed which leads one to believe the legislative text could do with input from someone with a practical knowledge of racing’s day to day administration.
But the Turf Club can’t seem to catch a break these days, making it very sensitive to slight, so more than a few backs appear to have been put out by Ruby Walsh’s Moyglare dinner contribution when the champion jockey urged the merger of all funds relating to injured jockeys.
Walsh was there to formally accept a €50,000 donation from Eva-Maria Bucher-Haefner and argued the amalgamation of Irish Injured Jockeys and the four funds administered by the Turf Club would provide a unified structure and help focus public attention.
That he made this suggestion at a Turf Club gig didn’t go down well at all, especially since it seems there’s a lot more money floating around in the four funds which it was pointedly pointed out are administered free of charge. Walsh’s motives are undoubtedly pure but it was also pointed out how it’s easy to be socialist with someone else’s money.
And finally, a 5,104 attendance for Coral day at Leopardstown is pretty underwhelming: yet plenty of them appear to have been left frustrated by near 45 minute traffic delays leaving the track. On such things can return return-footfall depend.
