Mark Walsh celebrates Gold Cup glory on Inothewayurthinkin

A walk in the park for McManus's latest Gold Cup hero

By John Ingles

Horse Racing

Mon March 17, 2025 · 9M ago

John Ingles looks into the origins of Inothewayurthinkin, a second home-bred Gold Cup winner for the Festival's most successful owner.

J. P. McManus looked to have assembled arguably his strongest squad ever for a Cheltenham Festival this season and by and large his team didn’t disappoint. Inevitably, not everything went to plan, with odds-on defeats for Majborough in the Arkle and Jonbon in the Champion Chase – two races McManus has therefore yet to win – while he had mixed fortunes in the Gold Cup, suffering the loss of Corbetts Cross who was himself a Festival winner twelve months earlier.

But with six winners, and another ten horses placed either second or third, McManus was the leading owner at the Festival for the third year running and the fifth time since 2019. That took his total number of winners at the meeting over the years to 84, 43 years after Mister Donovan landed a gamble to become his first Festival winner in what was then the Sun Alliance Novices’ Hurdle.

These days, it’s McManus’s acquisition of new horses rather than his successful touches that tend to make the headlines. He won the latest incarnation of the old ‘Sun Alliance’, nowadays the Turners, with The New Lion who was having his first run in the green and gold hoops after being bought for an undisclosed sum following The New Lion’s impressive win in the Challow. The French-bred trio of Fact To File, Dinoblue and Jagwar provided McManus with three more of his Festival winners in the Ryanair Chase, Mares’ Chase and Plate.

But through his wife Noreen, McManus is a breeder too and two more of last week’s winners were home-breds, including the Fred Winter winner Puturhandstogether who, rather surprisingly perhaps, has a Flat pedigree. Also a winner on the Flat in the McManus colours for Joseph O’Brien, he’s by high-class sprinter Caravaggio out of the unraced Galileo mare Round of Applause. But the other home-bred, whose victory was no doubt all the sweeter for that, was very much bred for the jumping game. Gold Cup winner Inothewayurthinkin, who was supplemented, came thirteen years after McManus first won the race with another home-bred Synchronised.

It was the second Festival running where Inothewayurthinkin’s dam Sway had distinguished herself. Twelve months earlier, Inothewayurthinkin had initiated a Festival double for his dam in the Fulke Walwyn Kim Muir when backed as if defeat was out of the question. Twenty-four hours later, his elder sister Limerick Lace won the Mares’ Chase, and while she failed in her bid to retain her title last week, Dinoblue still provided McManus with a fourth consecutive winner of that contest.

Inothewayurthinkin's sister Limerick Lace wins at last year's Festival

Sway has an excellent record as a broodmare all round with all six of her foals to have raced being winners for Gavin Cromwell. Her first two foals were by Yeats and strong stayers, with the useful Spades Are Trumps counting the Ulster National among his wins, while Ilikedwayurthinkin won four races for Cromwell and ran twice at the Festival in the Martin Pipe. He’s had a resurgent campaign in staying chases for Ben Haslam this season, winning four times but shaping as if amiss in last month’s Eider.

Sway’s other winners are the Galileo mare Walk Me Home, a winner over hurdles at Wexford, and the lightly raced six-year-old Mywayofthinkin (by Flemensfirth) who looked a good prospect when winning on his debut over hurdles at Punchestown last May and could have his first run in a handicap at Cork later this week.

While Sway has certainly delivered for McManus as a broodmare, it would be fair to say she didn’t really fulfil early promise for him on the track. A French non-thoroughbred by the Arc fourth Califet (also sire of McManus’s latest Kim Muir runner-up Johnnywho), Sway won four of her six hurdles at Auteuil as a three-year-old for Califet’s trainer Guy Cherel. She was highly tried for a juvenile on her British debut for Jonjo O’Neill in the National Spirit Hurdle at Fontwell where she fell three out and faced no easy task again when down the field behind Quevega in the David Nicholson Mares’ Hurdle at Cheltenham.

Sway came from the same family as the Grand Annual winner Oiseau de Nuit but she fared no better on her second Festival attempt a year later when the last to finish as a 50/1-shot in the novices’ handicap chase. She had at least won a couple of races over fences for her new owner by then at Ludlow and Exeter.

So much for the Gold Cup winner’s dam. As we’ll see, things could have turned out very differently for Inothewayurthinkin’s sire Walk In The Park. By Montjeu out of Classic Park whose claim to fame was being Aidan O’Brien’s first classic winner in the 1997 Irish 1000 Guineas, Walk In The Park raced in Michael Tabor’s colours but rather than Ballydoyle was sent to Montjeu’s trainer John Hammond in France.

Walk In The Park won only on, as a two-year-old, but he finished third in the Criterium International that year and earned himself a place in the Derby field after finishing second in the Lingfield Derby Trial. He completed a one-two for his sire in finishing five lengths second to Motivator (Dubawi was third) and ran the race of his life despite hardly looking the ideal type to handle Epsom’s turns and gradients. Timeform’s paddock reporter went so far as to describe him as ‘huge and one of the biggest horses we’ve seen on the Flat in recent times.’

Reportedly jarred up in the Irish Derby next time, Walk In The Park never repeated his Derby form in a handful of subsequent starts, the last of which came in a try over hurdles as a five-year-old at Auteuil. Walk In The Park might have had the size for jumping but he seemingly didn’t have the aptitude, pulling hard and lacking fluency in his jumps. Months later, Walk In The Park was entered in the Arc Sale where he was sold for €195,000 and, as he was still an entire, began a stud career in France the following year at a modest fee of just €2,500.

Jonbon's brother Douvan was Walk In The Park's first star performer

It wasn’t long before another son of Montjeu, Hurricane Fly, began to make a name for himself over hurdles but the biggest boost to Walk In The Park’s stallion career came when Hurricane Fly’s trainer Willie Mullins won the 2015 Supreme Novices’ with French import Douvan, a member of the then little-known Walk In The Park’s second crop, who proceeded to win his first 13 starts for Mullins and Rich Ricci, earning the highest Timeform rating of any jumper Mullins has trained. By the time Min – from Walk In The Park’s next crop, and another top-notch jumper in the making - had finished second to Altior in the Supreme a year later for the same connections, Walk In The Park had already been snapped up by Coolmore to join their jumps stallion roster at Grange Stud where he has been standing at a ‘private’ fee ever since. The wheel had therefore turned full circle after he’d started out in Tabor’s colours.

With 27 runners, Walk In The Park was easily the best-represented sire at Cheltenham last week. Inothewayurthinkin was his only winner, but Jonbon in the Champion Chase and The Changing Man in the Ultima were runners-up in their races and the stand-out among three third-place finishers was Final Demand behind The New Lion in the Turners, a fine big chasing type for next season.

Inothewayurthinkin’s new Timeform rating of 174+ after the Gold Cup puts him alongside Min among Walk In The Park’s highest-rated jumpers and behind only Douvan and his brother Jonbon whom McManus had bought for a then record sum after winning his Irish point. Another top-class chaser in the current McManus string, Spillane’s Tower, also features among Walk In The Park’s best jumpers.

McManus’s ‘soft spot’ for Walk In The Park’s progeny was explained immediately after the Gold Cup when he told the tale of how he’d actually bought him as a yearling at Newmarket only for the sale to fall through when he failed the vet. Presumably Walk In The Park already had plenty of size about him even then and McManus could no doubt picture him making up into a decent jumper – given time and a gelding operation of course. Luckily for all concerned, and McManus in particular, fate dictated otherwise and Walk In The Park has provided him with a Gold Cup – and, who knows, maybe even a Grand National – winner too instead.

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