The main trophy of the afternoon was golden. So was the sunshine that made occasional appearances. But the clouds were grey, or occasionally charcoal. And the white caps on the Wicklow Hills were a reminder that, even if this was the last big event of the jumps racing season, summer had not arrived.
The point was underlined poignantly by a Mister Softee ice-cream van, parked near the parade ring. “Slow! Watch for children,” warned a sign on the back, a little unnecessarily in the context. Children are scarce here at the best of times, while on a day when hailstones were liable to fall at any moment, “Slow!” might have described the trade in 99s.
The results were in keeping with the fickle weather. A horse called Supasundae was one of a succession of favourites not to win, making it more of a woeful Wednesday for punters. Nor, for most of the day, was there any change of luck for the previously unbeatable trainer, Willie Mullins, or his occasional collaborators, Michael O’Leary’s Gigginstown Stud.
Crowned
O’Leary’s operation had already been crowned the season’s champion owners on both sides of the Irish Sea, winning both the Irish and English Grand Nationals among a hoard of big prizes. But the Ryanair chief has had a bumpy landing here this week, exemplified in Wednesday’s main event by a heavy fall for Road to Riches, when it was in contention at the second-last fence. For a while afterwards it looked bad for the horse, when it took him much longer than jockey Davy Russell to get up. But he did, eventually, to everyone’s relief, by which time the 12/1 chance Carlingford Lough had sprung a surprise win, beating the odds-on English favourite Cue Card into fourth place.
“Up Dungarvan!” shouted supporters of the winning trainer, John Kiely, who still rides out several of his horses in training every day, although now only a year shy of 80. It was left to jockey Barry Geraghty, meanwhile, to be photographed kissing the Gold Cup: actually a giant tankard, decorated with relief sculptures of archers on horseback firing arrows at each other. It’s probably a good thing that jump jockeys are not yet equipped with such weapons. As it was, Katie Walsh had to rely on mere determination and guile when partnering the aptly named Blow by Blow to victory in a tight finish to the day’s fifth race, the “bumper”.
Winners
So doing, she also turned the luck for the racing aristocrats. Not only was Blow by Blow carrying the purple colours of Gigginstown, it was also trained by Willie Mullins, perennial Irish champion who came within a whisker of winning the British title too last weekend, but who had been finding winners hard to come by here.
In fact, he saddled four of the first five home in the same race. But his improved fortunes did not quite extend to those betting on the event. The winner was yet another outsider, at 14/1. Mullins’s best-backed horse was third.
A crowd of 18,000 braved the wind-chill factor of day two, among them an impressive number of entrants for the best-dressed lady contest. That was local woman Audrey Kelly, from Naas, who wore a pink two-piece. This included a short-sleeved top. More sensibly, and with the sort of radicalism the judges wanted, it also included trousers.
