The Welsh dragon roared with a vengeance at Fairyhouse on Easter Monday as Haiti Couleurs landed the €500,000 Boylesports Irish Grand National.
Britain’s champion jockey-elect Sean Bowen guided the 13-2 shot to become the first cross-channel trained winner of Ireland’s richest jumps race in 11 years.
Runner-up for the second year in a row was Ted Walsh’s gallant veteran Any Second Now, who was immediately retired afterwards. The 11-2 favourite Quai De Bourbon had to settle for third in the 30-runner contest.
If Wales has its own ‘National’ at Chepstow every Christmas, this very much proved to be a Welsh National in Ireland.
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Haiti Couleurs is trained by Rebecca Curtis in the west Wales racing outpost of Pembrokeshire, the same county Bowen is from.
Geographically, Fairyhouse is closer to Curtis’s yard than a lot of racecourses in Britain and she made her first visit to the Ratoath track count in spades.
Having raced prominently throughout when successful at last month’s Cheltenham festival, none of Haiti Couleurs’ opposition could have been tactically surprised when he disputed the lead with Bushmans Pass from the start.
Knowing that and doing enough to pass him proved beyond everyone as Bowen enjoyed an armchair ride. Haiti Couleurs might have found the pre-race build-up a sweaty ordeal, but he was professionalism itself when it counted and ran out a convincing winner.
It was just a second winner in Ireland for 27-year-old Bowen, who will be crowned British champion jockey for the first time at Sandown on Saturday. His previous Irish success was on the former Aintree National winner Noble Yeats at Wexford in 2022.
“I honestly can’t believe it. He was doing a half speed the whole way around, he was hacking and at the same time I was frightened as he got fairly revved up beforehand. I actually thought I’m a bit too keen, as he was doing everything in second gear,” beamed Bowen.
It was just a third success in Ireland for Curtis, 45, who began her racing career working for Bowen’s father, Peter, before starting to train on her father’s dairy farm in 2008.
She has enjoyed six Cheltenham festival victories and landed the 2018 Scottish Grand National with Joe Farrell. However, the significance of winning Ireland’s richest race at a time of overwhelming Irish dominance in National Hunt racing was lost on no one.
“I think this feels like one of our best wins, just the atmosphere and everything. I did feel the pressure; I haven’t slept for about two weeks!” Curtis said. “To me, it is a bigger win than Cheltenham because it is hard to come here and win an Irish handicap, I know that.”
She added: “Sean just said to me there ‘I thought we had another circuit to go, I was in second gear the whole way’. He is so tough to do it like he has done it, on that ground as well as it was a bit of a worry – but it wasn’t a bother to him.
“Although he stays well, he is not what I call a slow horse at all. He has got a high cruising speed. Could you ever imagine him being a Gold Cup horse, I don’t know, but he’s not slow.”
In the 153rd Irish National Haiti Couleurs was the ninth British-trained winner of the historic race since the war. Curtis is the fifth woman to saddle the winner. Bowen was the first cross-channel based rider to win since Harry Skelton in 2009.
An emotional Ted Walsh confirmed Any Second Now was finished racing at the age of 13 after another National near miss. JP McManus’s horse was also runner-up at Aintree in 2022 and third the year before that in Liverpool.
“You never mind getting beat when there are no excuses and there were no excuses,” Walsh said.
If the National continued its pattern of throwing up unlikely winners, much of the rest of Easter Monday’s Fairyhouse action was dominated by Irish racing’s big guns.
Willie Mullins produced the first two winners in Last Kingdom and Blue Lemons while his Sortudo completed a hat-trick for the champion trainer in the concluding bumper.
His big domestic rival Gordon Elliott enjoyed a Grade Two double. Maxxum was too good for the Mullins favourite Gala Marceau in the Rathbarry & Glenview Hurdle and Found A Fifty successfully concede weight all round in the €100,000 Fairyhouse Chase.
Fifth to Marine Nationale in the Champion Chase at Cheltenham, Found A Fifty pounced on Saint Sam at the last and held off his rallying rival on the run in.
“To be fair, Grade Two and Grade Three are probably his level. He mightn’t just be a Grade One horse. If we keep him in that class next year, he could win loads of races,” Elliott said.
An official attendance of 16,577 was returned for the Irish Grand National. Fairyhouse boss Peter Roe said it was almost exactly the same as in 2024.
