Unlikely as it may sound, it fell to a horse called Langer Dan to save the honour of British trainers on day two of the Cheltenham Festival. The score was 8-1 to Ireland when the Dan Skelton-saddled gelding won the Coral Cup Handicap Hurdle for the second year running.
But with a moniker like that, there had to be an Irish angle somewhere. And on closer inspection, there was also an Irish joke at English expense.
The horse’s owner, Colm Donlon, is a Dubliner now based in London with a string of horses divided between Skelton and another top British trainer, Paul Nicholls.
As explained to me by his brother Barry, the name arose one night “when we were trying to think of something we could get past racing officials here”, who traditionally disapprove of anything risqué.
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Did this happen in a pub? “Yes, it did,” confirmed Barry. The brothers already had the “Dan” part, via the trainer. They then added the well-known Cork slang term on the basis that nobody in England would know what it meant.
Sure enough, even as he explained this, the official announcer in the Cheltenham winners’ enclosure was lingering on the “g” of the horse’s prefix, making the word sound more like “languor”.
Meanwhile, among those applauding politely was Princess Anne, mercifully oblivious to something that had just occurred to an appalled Irish Times reporter: the accidental pun on her name that the horse’s name also includes.
That race was Willie Mullins’s first setback of the day after he had added two more wins to his three from Tuesday, taking his Cheltenham career record to 99.
His dominance had been underlined brutally in Wednesday’s opener, where he trained the first five horses home, turning the race into an early St Patrick’s Day parade.
🗣 "It's hard to know how to feel."
— Racing TV (@RacingTV) March 13, 2024
Willie Mullins - 100 #CheltenhamFestival winner. He speaks to @LydiaHislop about an incredible achievement 👇 pic.twitter.com/6gP79GWOdw
Mullins’s century of Cheltenham winners looked all but certain to come in the day’s big event, the Queen Mother Champion Chase, via the hottest of hot favourites, El Fabiolo. But as local cricketers could have warned him, 99 can be a dangerous number. Now it was Mullins’s turn to experience a sticky wicket.
After a mistake at one of the early fences, El Fabiolo sprawled on landing and, seemingly stuck in the heavy going, all but stopped before resuming uncertainly, then being pulled up.
The race was thereby gifted to Captain Guinness, ridden by Rachael Blackmore, and handing the Queen Mother trophy — via Queen Camilla, who presented it — to (King) Henry de Bromhead, the Waterford trainer who has been Mullins’s only real rival here so far.
The winning horse would have been called Arthur Guinness, if his owner Declan Landy, a Kildare fencing contractor, had had his way.
But that name was already taken, unsurprisingly. So the horse instead gained his prefix from one of Kildare’s few places of altitude, Captain’s Hill near Leixlip. Thanks to this victory, Captain Guinness has now earned his stripes.
Mullins duly landed his 100th winner in Wednesday’s last race when his son Patrick steered Jasmin de Vaux to victory.
In the Prestbury Cup competition, that brought Ireland’s lead over British-trained horses to 10-3 at the halfway stage, although thanks to Mullins, the People’s Republic of Carlow can claim to be the most successful entity in these islands, with six wins already.
Wednesday had been billed as a day of “fast horses, slow fashion”, the latter a reference to the recycled or vintage clothes favoured in the best-dressed persons’ competition.
Dominant as it was in the first half of the marketeers’ slogan, alas, Ireland did not make the places in the second, although a woman named Bray (Amy, from Plymouth) was among the prize-winners after a last-minute weather-enforced change of outfit.
She had been planning to wear “a big pink fairy dress” but abandoned this in favour of a warmer, 10-year-old suit from Marks & Spencer, with accessories thrown together in minutes.
The weather also caught out some of the day’s four-legged competitors, with several high-profile horses being pulled because of the going.
It is not, however, believed to have been a factor in the Royal Box, where despite an impressive turnout including the Queen, Princess Anne, and Zara Philips, Kate Middleton was again a non-runner.
Even as Mullins’s coronation as the greatest Cheltenham trainer ever was taking place, meanwhile, there was poignant news from his home county, with the death of Dan O’Neill, once Ireland’s most famous bonesetter, aged 93.
O’Neill was a link with a humbler, and occasionally more romantic, era for Irish horse racing. His small but great-hearted horse Danoli (named for O’Neill and his daughter Olivia) was also the sort of small-man’s triumph that jumps racing used to pride itself on back then.
When Danoli won at Cheltenham 30 years ago this week, ridden by Charlie Swan, it caused wild celebrations not just in Carlow but nationally. There were only three Irish winners that year, unthinkable now. And another thing that doesn’t happen much any more is the horse had been blessed en route to England by his local parish priest.
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