Cheltenham Festival: Just when you wait all day for an Irish syndicate to come along and oblige at a big price . . . two arrive together
BERTIE’S DREAM was alive and well on Gold Cup day at Cheltenham, but punters continued to endure a nightmare.
The Bertie in this case was the late Bertie Broderick, a Dubliner from East Wall who always wanted to own a horse. Three days before he died in 2008, that dream was finally realised, when his kitchen-fitter son Conor bought a share in a five-year-old gelding and named it in his father’s honour.
Now out of work, an emotional Conor Broderick and the rest of the “Half a Keg” syndicate saw the horse triumph in yesterday’s Albert Bartlett Novices Hurdle. It swept into the winner’s enclosure amid great excitement and the waving of the Dublin GAA colours; another Broderick family passion. And heart-warming as the moment was, it was not just Conor who was in danger of crying.
At 33-1, the winner continued a week-long run of results that bookmakers would not have had the nerve to hope for beforehand, and that made punters despair.
Still, it was impossible not to be happy for the Half a Keg crew, who had bought the horse as an “unbelievable bargain” (under €10,000, they hinted) from the trainer, Galway man PJ Gilligan.
That investment has already repaid itself several times over thanks to yesterday’s £43,580 (€48,350) first prize. So there may be more than half a keg needed tonight when they return home to celebrate in their twin local pubs: Grainger’s of Marino and Gaffney’s of Fairview.
We waited in vain all day on Thursday for a winning Irish syndicate to come along and then yesterday, typically, two arrived together.
Half an hour earlier, a horse called Thousand Stars won the Vincent O’Brien County Handicap Hurdle at 20/1, thereby extending an extraordinary record for the Kildare carpenter-and-bricklayer combination who own him, and go under the name of the “Hammer and Trowel” Syndicate.
Some people buy multiple horses and never have one good enough to run at Cheltenham. Ger O’Brien (the hammer) and Seán Deane (the trowel) own a mere three, all of which ran here this week and finished in the money.
In Quevega, they even had that rarest of animals: a winning favourite (and they “broke the bank” backing it, according to O’Brien). Thousand Stars was somewhat more in keeping with this four-day-long Bookies’ Benefit, obliging at double-figure odds.
Among the losers in the same race, incidentally, were the extended Haughey family. Two sons of the former taoiseach, Ciarán and Conor, were at Prestbury Park to support Puyol, trained by their sister Eimear Mulhern and owned by the estate of her late husband, who died earlier this week. But the horse finished a distant 20th, with only a handful of runners behind him.
Even as Ruby Walsh vied yet again to be the named top jockey of the festival, the disturbing possibility arose that he may not even be the top jockey in the Walsh household.
On board Thousand Stars, his sister Katie finished the week with two wins. Ruby might have been relieved to hear her say that she had “absolutely no ambition” to turn professional. However with one or two more rides allied to a little luck in running, she could well have been in the hunt for the most successful festival jockey title which, in the event, went again to her illustrious brother.
In fairness to the more famous sibling, he proved his brilliance in the Gold Cup when somehow staying aboard Kauto Star after the horse sliced through one of the fences for a short cut. His heroics only prolonged the inevitable, however.
When Denman couldn’t take advantage of his rival’s fall, it was the coup de grace for punters as Imperial Commander stretched clear for victory. The last nail in the coffin was readied and there was a syndicate with a hammer nearby. Even before the day’s racing began, in fact, the bookmakers couldn’t lose.
“Not unless I go mad,” confirmed Cork’s Ellen Martin, the glamour-girl (and possibly the only girl) of the Cheltenham bookies’ ring. Asked what going mad might involve, she expanded on the theme: “Well, maybe if I woke up this morning feeling a bit hormonal and decided to take on Kauto Star. He’s 10-11 at the moment. Say I went 4-5 on him. I’d be knocked into [the nearby village of] Prestbury with the wave of money.”
As it happened, she could have done that too and got away with it. The sweets she was handing out to every customer were the nearest thing to charity they could expect. But having earlier told Channel 4’s John McCririck that she would spend her winnings on a holiday in the Canaries, she admitted that was just a line for television.
“I wouldn’t go to the Canaries if you paid me,” she said. Instead, she plans an extensive beauty treatment in a shop her friend has just opened in Youghal.
“Her name’s Helen Russell, she’s been in the business 20 years and she’s a dinger”, said Martin. “I’m going in for the whole works: hot stones, waxing, you name it. It’ll be like the NCT.”