Timeform analysis of the Punchestown Festival including Gaelic Warrior and Lossiemouth

"Andy, I can’t feel my legs – I’m absolutely knackered,” was the alarming message Graeme Sharp had for strike partner Andy Gray just ten minutes into the 1985 FA Cup Final, when their team Everton were bidding to complete an unprecedented treble having already won that season’s league title (by thirteen points!) and European Cup Winners’ Cup.

Everton were hot favourites having defeated Wembley rivals Manchester United twice already in 1984/85 (including a 5-0 drubbing at Goodison Park), whilst they’d rounded off their European campaign with victory in a one-sided Final against Rapid Vienna in Rotterdam less than three days earlier.

Elite sport, however, is littered with examples of teams and individuals going to the well once too often and Everton’s busy campaign caught up with them at Wembley, where they limped to a 1-0 defeat after extra time despite Manchester United being reduced to ten men for the final three-quarters of an hour.

The form book can sometimes be thrown out of the window with similar justification in other sports too, with the Punchestown Festival often the most potent source for such examples in top-level jumps racing.

The opening day to the 2016 Festival proved a case in point when the all-conquering Willie Mullins yard suffered costly reverses in the card’s three Grade 1 contests, including the hitherto-unbeaten Yorkhill managing only fourth of six when sent off 9/4-on favourite for the Champion Novices’ Hurdle.

“I think it was one race too many. He felt good at home and looked good, but you never truly know,” rued Mullins afterwards. Of course, Yorkhill’s quirks got the better of him later in his career, so with hindsight some may feel that might have been a factor in his defeat.

The same could never be said of the Colin Tizzard-trained stalwart Cue Card, though, yet he was another to fall foul of the Punchestown curse 24 hours later, an unusually subdued performance seeing him finish only fourth when odds-on for the Punchestown Gold Cup, finishing behind three rivals he’d comprehensively beaten merely weeks earlier. “We didn’t think he’d had a hard race at either Cheltenham or Aintree, but it’s just the end of the season taking its toll,” reported the Tizzard team afterwards.

Ten years on and it briefly seemed as if the latest Punchestown Festival was set to follow a similar pattern, with the meeting’s first two Grade 1 contests going to outsiders Eachtotheirown (16/1) and Western Fold (18/1), the latter reversing Cheltenham form with the Mullins-trained odds-on favourite Kitzbuhel, who was pulled up.

Happily for punters, normal service resumed for most of the remainder of the week, with odds-on shots Il Etait Temps, Gaelic Warrior, Dinoblue, King Rasko Grey and Lossiemouth all following up their Cheltenham Festival wins – although assessing what they actually achieved in doing so wasn’t always so straightforward.

A prime example of this came in the standout performance of the week, which saw Gaelic Warrior (c180) beat old rival Fact To File (c174) by 26 lengths in the Punchestown Gold Cup, a record winning margin in the race since it was switched to a Grade 1 back in 1999.

Gaelic Warrior’s impressive Cheltenham Gold Cup performance had already been franked several times in the intervening weeks and it’s clear he’s taken his form to new levels with these last two wins, but margins of 26 lengths, then 28 lengths and a further 37 lengths back to the three other finishers on Wednesday strongly suggest that none of his rivals were anywhere near their best – as was also the case when Galopin des Champs routed three rivals in last year’s renewal (winning margin a mere 22 lengths!).

Indeed, there is plenty of recent evidence which demonstrates the difference between Gaelic Warrior and Fact To File being much closer than 26 lengths, notably when the latter beat him by five lengths in the Irish Gold Cup at Leopardstown in February, whilst there was only a neck between them when Gaelic Warrior shaded an epic renewal of the John Durkan at Punchestown in late-November.

In addition, even though Fact To File was an eleventh-hour absentee at the Cheltenham Festival, there must be a chance he was over the top seven weeks on from being primed to run there.

That said, Gaelic Warrior now leads their head-to-head by three to two and, significantly, has come out on top for three of their last four meetings. As a result, he has to be rated the superior of the pair for now, his new Timeform rating of 180 the highest for any jumper currently in training.

That lofty figure also places him in a high rank historically, with only thirteen Cheltenham Gold Cup winners since 1970 having achieved a higher Timeform rating, whilst the manner of his last two wins suggests he could better it in the future too – still only eight, he holds strong claims of dominating the staying division for a while yet.

As ever, the greatest threat to that domination will probably come from within his own yard, with Il Etait Temps (175) likely to provide stern opposition if allowed to tackle longer trips next winter, particularly as he beat Gaelic Warrior on their last meeting at the 2024 Punchestown Festival – although the latter does lead their head-to-head by two to one.

Whereas Fact To File has managed just three wins from nine starts since graduating from the novice ranks, Il Etait Temps has proved a model of consistency and is now unbeaten on his last seven completed starts, that rare off day when taking a tired fall at Ascot in January already a distant memory.

In addition, his Punchestown win was one of the few results this week which had a solid feel to it, as he emphatically lowered the colours of 2025 Queen Mother Champion Chase winner Marine Nationale (167), who was one of the fresher horses at the meeting having missed Cheltenham due to a minor setback and had no excuses on the day.

Of course, impressive wins at Cheltenham and Punchestown make Il Etait Temps the clear division leader over two miles, so it will be understandable if connections opt to keep him at that trip for the time being with question marks surrounding several of his likely rivals. Chief amongst these is stable-companion Majborough (c172x), whose lacklustre fourth on Tuesday was surely down to more than just another clumsy round of jumping.

His monster performance when beating Marine Nationale by 19 lengths at the Dublin Racing Festival remains one of the best of the season, but connections (and punters for that matter!) can have zero confidence of him reproducing it any time soon judging by his two bitterly disappointing efforts since.

A step-up in trip for Majborough is reportedly now being considered by his connections, who’ll be hoping Harry Cobden can eradicate those clumsy tendencies in his new role as retained jockey for JP McManus – outgoing jockey Mark Walsh recorded a 900th career win when partnering the admirable Dinoblue (c158) to a second successive victory in the Glencarraig Lady Francis Flood Mares’ Chase on Friday.

Majborough isn’t only leading two-miler to find the fences getting in the way at present, as the Mullins-trained novice Kopek des Bordes (c163p) was let down by his jumping in the latter stages for the second start running, crashing out at the second last in the Barberstown Castle Novices’ Chase. The exuberant six-year-old is only three runs into his chasing career, however, and the positives still far outweigh any negatives at this stage – particularly as he looked to have the measure of eventual winner Salvator Mundi (c154) at the time of his exit.

Connections of Kopek des Bordes don’t have to look far for examples of leading performers who’ve successfully bounced back from heavy falls as, in addition to Il Etait Temps this season, Lossiemouth (h162) has now won six out of seven starts since her X-rated spill at the 2025 Dublin Racing Festival and seems set to dominate the hurdling scene for some time yet.

She looked every bit as good ever when defeating fellow mare Golden Ace (h148) by five lengths in Fridays Punchestown Champion Hurdle, providing further proof of how valuable the 7 lb mares’ allowance continues to prove in such contests – mares have now won six of the last seven Grade 1 two-mile hurdles, the ill-fated Sir Gino (164) the only one to buck that brend when winning the Christmas Hurdle at Kempton (when Golden Ace was runner-up).

As with Gaelic Warrior and Il Etait Temps, Lossiemouth sat out this year’s Aintree Festival (which wasn’t the case with both Yorkhill and Cue Card back in 2016) and that was possibly significant in them all still being very much at the top of their game this week.

Arguably the most popular win of the week, however, came in Thursday’s Champion Stayers’ Hurdle when, unlike Messrs Sharp and Gray, sprightly veteran Bob Olinger (158) still had plenty of life left in his legs under the spring sunshine, landing the fifth Grade 1 win of his career as he signed off into honourable retirement. It completed a 190/1-treble on the card for his excellent jockey Darragh O’Keeffe, whilst it was also the third successive Grade 1 staying hurdle to go the way of an eleven-year-old, following on from the wins at Cheltenham and Aintree by Home By The Lee (157).

Speaking of unprecedented trebles, 2026 is the first time in history that all three winners of Cheltenham’s main championship events – the Champion Hurdle, Queen Mother Champion Chase and Cheltenham Gold Cup – have gone on to also land the same year’s equivalent Punchestown races. Writing as a long-suffering Toffee, I wonder if Willie Mullins could be persuaded to take over Everton’s training for next season…..

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