Report Rest of yesterday's racesAny presumptuous ideas that this year's Cheltenham festival was becoming just a little too easy for Irish horses were blown out of the water yesterday as the home team, led by the Ryanair Chase winner Fondmort, hit back with a vengeance.
Only the JP McManus-owned Kadoun in the concluding Pertemps Hurdle prevented a British clean sweep but it wasn't just the freezing cold weather that resulted in a less than ecstatic return to a deserted winner's enclosure. Fifty to one winners don't encourage too much flag waving.
McManus admitted he actually only realised Kadoun was in the race earlier in the morning but the 50 to 1 proved too tempting to resist. The bet paid off in style too as Tom Ryan steered the Michael O'Brien-trained winner to beat his better fancied compatriots Hordago and Oodachee.
"Tom's a good rider and I thought the horse had a squeak," smiled the owner whose celebrations were sadly diluted by the fatal injury to another of his runners, Olaso, in the race.
McManus had earlier also won the opening Jewson Novice Handicap Chase with the Tony McCoy-ridden Reveillez who dismissed fears about his jumping with a decisive defeat of Copsale Lad.
The winner was backed down to 4 to 1 after McManus admitted the 6 to 1 on offer was too tempting to resist and his judgment was proved right again as McCoy rode his first festival winner for the owner.
"Obviously I wanted the Champion Hurdle but the thing I came here to do this week was ride a winner for JP. He puts such a lot into the game. Full marks to the trainer (James Fanshawe) because based on his three previous runs over fences I couldn't have the horse," said McCoy.
Mick Fitzgerald did at least provide a green hue to Fondmort's dramatic defeat of Lacdoudal and Impek in the big chase but even the famously talkative Wexford man was happy to deflect attention to the horse. "He means everything to me. You'd pull yourself out of a hospital bed to ride him. He may not be the best I've ridden but he's one of my favourite horses of all time," said Fitzgerald.
Trainer Nicky Henderson agreed and said: "He's a different horse around here. It's like he has home games and away games and he plays the home games here. He doesn't know how to put a foot wrong and his jumping is ridiculously accurate."
Considerably less happy, however, was Impek's trainer Henrietta Knight who criticised the starter after her horse got upset at the start. "The horse was very worked up and the starter would not wait despite Tony pleading with him to wait while I tried to calm the horse down," she said. "I think the starting procedures have been very bad this week for what is a championship meeting. It takes a lot to make me angry but this really has."
The Fitzgerald-Henderson team went on to complete a 64 to 1 double with Non So in the Racing Post Plate. The winner overhauled his stable companion Saintsaire who fell at the last to win by nine lengths. "This new track is much stiffer than the old course so I let the others come back to me," explained the veteran rider who joined six other jockeys who have ridden two winners at the festival so far.
The four-mile National Hunt Chase would have been an Irish benefit were it not for the presence of the 33 to 1 shot Hot Weld who beat a trio of Irish horses in a desperate finish to the marathon event. Just a neck separated the winner from the 40 to 1 shot Beantown with the well-backed McManus favourite Far From Trouble only third.
The Cork amateur rider Richard Harding (24) was completing after scoring in Tuesday's Kim Muir with another 33 to 1 Ferdy Murphy winner, You're Special. "I'd not sat on either horse before I came over. To ride two winners is unreal," said Harding whose brother Brian famously won the Champion Chase on One Man.
Murphy was impressed with the jockey: "He's a good kid. He'll be getting a few offers now. When the other horses came alongside I thought he might struggle a bit but the jockey used his head and kept a bit back."
Harding, despite his two winners, doesn't figure in the betting for the leading rider award which will be decided today. McCoy is one of the seven on two winners each and is a 5 to 4 to emerge best.
