The Dublin Racing Festival is racing’s best innovation of recent times. This weekend was spectacular. Full marks to Horseracing Ireland and Leopardstown, who put on a terrific show which attracts all the domestic big guns.
Faugheen’s win on Sunday showed Irish racing at its best with a heroic performance by the 12-year-old followed by an outpouring of love and admiration.
The usual faces dominated most of the Grade Ones but it was healthy that some of the ‘love’ got shared around. For example, it was enjoyable to see Paul Nolan and Bryan Cooper back on the big stage.
Paul Gilligan only trains a handful of horses and was having his first Leopardstown winner when Conor Maxwell and Glamorgan Duke battled back so brilliantly to win Sunday’s Gaelic Plant Hire Leopardstown Handicap Chase. The horse's looks, head-carriage, jumping and bravery reminded me so much of my all-time favourite, Dublin Flyer.
If Faugheen was the weekend’s equine star then the human star undoubtedly was the brilliant Rachael Blackmore. She is a gem for racing. She can take the sport to new places and people. We don't often get to see Rachel on ITV Racing, which makes me very excited for five weeks' time at Cheltenham. What an opportunity we have to showcase horse racing in a great light as a sport where men and women compete on a level playing field - and we currently have a sporting superstar.
After such a spectacular weekend there will inevitably be more calls for this country to copy the concept and produce a similar mid-winter festival either at Christmas or early in the New Year.
First, that’s never going to happen with the segregation of power between the racecourses in this country. Second, I don’t think we need to worry. Our racing just has a different ‘business plan’ to Ireland which is a strength and a weakness. Week in week out we have decent action and entertainment which is obviously popular as it’s producing big numbers on ITV every weekend.
That would all change if the top winter action was packed into two days. More of an issue is just having too many options with too few top quality horses, meaning the big guns can easily avoid one another.
Yes, more British trainers should try and plunder some of the Dublin Racing Festival’s excellent prize money but I have no problem with the big Anglo-Irish Cheltenham hopes being kept apart. I love the fact that Chacun Pour Soi, Latest Exhibition, Notebook, Honeysuckle, Asterion Forlonge, Faugheen and Delta Work laid down markers at Leopardstown.
That now sets up the ultimate collisions between Britain and Ireland at the Cheltenham Festival in front of 70,000 people and massive television audience. Perfect. That is what sport is all about and the crescendo to a season that is the envy of so many other sports.
This Saturday we head to Newbury for Betfair Super Saturday. If Altior can bounce back it will set up the clash of the season in the Betway Queen Mother Champion Chase. Defi Du Seuil v Chacun Pour Soi v Altior (with A Plus Tard seemingly waiting in the wings).
This weekend we were based at Sandown Park and need to thank RMG and various other bodies for allowing us to show recordings of the Grade One races at Leppardstown. Our contract means the focus, quite rightly, will always been on the domestic action and only, if as happened in 2019 and there's a significant meeting abandoned, will it open the door to showing the Irish races live.
While at Leopardstown Faugheen summed up everything that is great about National Hunt racing, we also witnessed a half-hour in Esher that showed why jump racing is so popular.
One minute Cue Card was mobbed at the RoR Parade and the next the Brooks family and Olly Murphy were celebrating their first Grade One success courtesy of Itchy Feet in the Scilly Isles Novices’ Chase. The public’s connection with old heroes and the passion shown by connections are big parts of jump racing’s secret.
We are very thankful for that as I’m convinced it’s played a big part in ITV Racing competing for big awards.
After all, it was the Randox Health Grand National that helped win the BAFTA and this week Cheltenham’s ‘Golden Hour’ has been nominated for the SJA's Best Live Event. I’m also thrilled that The Opening Show is up for an award as so much hard work goes in to that show and we’re very proud that racing still has a magazine programme when so many other sports have culled theirs.
More immediately our Cheltenham Festival coverage is nominated at the prestigious Broadcast Awards on Wednesday night. We are up against shows like the Six Nations and Cricket World Cup Final so will have our work cut out.
Win, lose or draw we will have a great time and enjoy horse racing competing in that company, safe in the knowledge after this weekend’s racing that indelible memories are guaranteed again in a few weeks' time on racing’s greatest stage.
