The turf
Irish pleasures
Robin Oakley
Is this a private party, or can anyone join in?' Anyone who has ever been racing in Irish company will know the sentiment. There is something special about the Irish on the turf. It is not just the wiry, weather- beaten types, the sort who can look in a horse's mouth and tell you its life history when most of us would be hard put to say what the animal had had for breakfast. It is the way the Irish know how to take their pleasures on the racecourse. No, madam, not those kind of pleasures.
Any horse which comes home in front with Irish money riding on it is wafted into the winner's enclosure on a (60 per cent proof, at least) wave of boisterous enthusi- asm. There is whooping and cheering, there are tears and laughter. And the bar- man's elbow is soon in need of cortisone assistance.
They put us buttoned-up Anglo-Saxons to shame. On an election tour once with a previous prime minister, I knew he was going to lose when he alighted at a provin- cial airport to be offered a foaming pint by a building-site worker with a lilt in his voice and replied, to the despair of the attendant photographers, 'No, thank you, I had cof- fee on the plane.'
Certainly the Irish well and truly gate- crashed the party when Jim Old scored his biggest success yet, saddling Collier Bay to win the MG Europe Champion Hurdle at Leopardstown. Winning trainer and jockey Jamie Osborne were sadly neglected as the home crowd hailed the return of the horse who finished in third place, their hero Danoli. Old and Osborne, who sound, but don't look, like a respectable old firm of solicitors, deserved better. But it was good for us all that Danoli made such a sensa- tional return to the racecourse. It was, after all, just 288 days since skilful Liverpool sur- geons had screwed together shattered pieces of bone to mend the off-fore he fractured at Aintree last April.
Trainer Tom Foley would have been con- tent for him merely to pull up sound. Fin- ishing in the money after he'd done little more than walking at home was a miracle.
The recovery, no, the renaissance of Ire- land's favourite horse, reviving dreams of his being whooped home up the Chel- tenham hill in this year's Champion, was the final ingredient we needed to whet the appetite. Just a few weeks ago, the Cham- pion had looked like anybody's race, a humdrum affair. Alderbrook, the classy flat performer who proved to have too much toe for them all last year, had not seen a racecourse since suffering bone chips last May. There seemed doubts whether Dano- li, third then, would ever run again. And the consistent Large Action, second last year, had just been sidelined for the season with an injury.
That is why we have seen a huge entry of 66 for this year's race, compared with 24 last year. But suddenly the picture has been transformed. Danoli has defied the odds to race again and pass the check-up X-rays, showing all his old zest and talent. Another Irish favourite with a long history of injuries, Montelado, twice a Festival win- ner, finished a creditable fourth in Collier Bay's race, on going he hates.
Alderbrook is back in training and pleas- ing his handler, Kim Bailey. And the gutsy mare Mysilv showed all her old resolve to lead all the way in Haydock's Champion Hurdle trial, restoring the faith of those who'd begun to doubt her after an earlier Ascot defeat by Pridwell. River North (hereby discarded as one of my ten to fol- low) has failed to live up to expectations over hurdles in two runs at Sandown and Kempton. But Richard Hannon's Right Win, noted here a few weeks back, looks a very promising recruit from the flat in the Alderbrook mode. Well-schooled by Gra- ham McCourt, he showed decent technique and impressive acceleration to win the hot Sandown race in which River North disap- pointed.
It is perhaps rather early for a bet unless you know something I don't about the French entry Wacio, trained by Jacques Ortet and currently available at 100-1. We need to wait and see how Alderbrook goes in his prep race, the Kingwell Hurdle at Wincanton which he won last year, likely to be contested too by David Elsworth's Atours. And Danoli will be coming out again at Gowran Park on 17 February. But if you are tempted this soon then perhaps you might want to take a punt on the going at Cheltenham in March and have some- thing each way on the unfairly neglected Collier Bay. Jim Old says he sweated buck- ets both on the plane over to Ireland and at the course and that there's more to come from him. As an each-way bet at 14-1 in some quarters he looks good value. But only on soft ground. If it's firm, he proba- bly won't even run.
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