Irish Champions Weekend preview: Graham Cunningham big race thoughts

Stand by for drama as Leopardstown rolls out the red carpet

Maybe it’s a Leopardstown thing but there’s something about the Irish Champion Stakes that lends itself to dramatic finishes that could easily have gone the other way under slightly different circumstances. You need a long memory to recall a few of them but, having trawled the archives, here are the Top Five What Might Have Beens……………

• 2001: A classic example of how skilful use of hares can make the difference between victory and defeat. Ice Dancer charged clear in service to Galileo but Fantastic Light’s lead horse Give The Slip played the crucial role. Richard Hills glanced over his left shoulder on the home turn, leaving just enough room for Frankie to get the saloon passage on Fantastic Light while ensuring Mick Kinane and Galileo had to work hard out in lane three. The Derby and King George hero gave his all – getting level at one point – but Fantastic Light edged home by a head in an epic scrap.
• 2002: ‘System working well, send more pacemakers.’ That was the Ballydoyle summary after one deep thinker nailed another in a memorable duel with Godolphin. Shishkin’s sire Sholokhov set a blistering gallop for Hawk Wing until Best of the Bests rolled forward and then it was all about Kinane and Dettori. Mick put Hawk Wing’s nose in front three strides out - and the Eclipse winner didn’t shirk - but Frankie coaxed the equally mercurial Grandera ahead bang on the line.
• 2003: Falbrav fans will need no reminding that their hero travelled in G1 class from start to finish of a ten-race season as a five-year-old. All went smoothly in four big wins at Longchamp, Sandown, York and Sha Tin but nothing went right for Darryll Holland at Leopardstown. Messrs Murtagh, Dettori and Fallon all played a part in ensuring Luca Cumani’s globetrotter remained locked up for most of the straight. The door finally opened inside the final furlong but Kinane soon slammed it shut on the rugged High Chaparral, who scrambled home by a neck.

• 2015: Less than a furlong to go and, under the full Frankie drive, Derby winner Golden Horn saw the grandstand shadow and cannoned into Pat Smullen and Prince of Wales’s winner Free Eagle with a violent right-handed jink. RP analyst Justin O’Hanlon felt the evidence for demotion “couldn’t be plainer.” But the luckless Free Eagle ended up losing second to Found. And the stewards decided to leave well alone at the end of a race that produced not one but two subsequent Arc winners.
• 2021: Ryan Moore is one of the brightest riders around – and among the cleanest when it comes to rough riding – but even Aidan O’Brien conceded that he deserved a lengthy ban for failing to do more to stop St Mark’s Basilica carrying Tarnawa across the track. It’s hard to be sure whether Dermot Weld’s filly would have won with an uninterrupted run. But it’s a Euro to a cent that Ryan would have done more to stop the drift had the rules favoured the victim rather than the offender.

Vive la France as Vadeni treads the Alamnzor route

O’Brien and Moore will feature heavily again in Saturday’s Royal Bahrain Irish Champion Stakes and, with the 5-day entries now available, we might well be in for another race where tactics and jockeyship play a crucial part.

Much can change before the weekend but Stone Age and possibly Broome are certainly capable of setting things up for their stablemate Luxembourg to show exactly how good he is.

But, for all that some still see Luxembourg as a major star waiting to announce himself, the jury is still out on that score.

True, the much-talked-about Camelot colt has won four of his five starts – his sole defeat coming when third behind the ill-fated Coroebus in the Guineas – and he came back from a lengthy break with a hard-earned defeat of Insinuendo at the Curragh last month.

O’Brien and Moore seem adamant that Luxembourg will come on a bundle for that but the record reflects that he was all out in G3 company to beat a 107-rated filly who had been off the track for even longer than he had.

In short, if Luxembourg gives Aidan an eleventh ICS success then I will be losing on the race. Mishriff is a viable alternative if back to the form he showed when coming home strongly for second in the Eclipse but, even at shortish odds, his Sandown conqueror VADENI looks very much the one to focus on.

Jean-Claude Rouget plotted a stealthy course to ICS victory with Almanzor in 2016 and Vadeni holds equally strong credentials after following a runaway French Derby success with a thrilling late swoop to thwart Mishriff by a neck at Sandown.

It’s true that Mishriff had to wait to secure a clear run that day but the abiding memory both from Chantilly and Sandown is the way that Vadeni quickened to settle matters.

Rouget feels that Almanzor “had more physical presence” but adds that Vadeni’s “change of foot is terribly good.” Only time will tell whether that turn of foot will be deployed against Baaeed and company in the Arc next month. But Baaeed isn’t heading to Leopardstown and, in his absence, the French colt’s acceleration might well be the deciding factor.

Time to say goodbye to bloated fillies’ programme

There is no such thing as a bad idea when it comes to racing’s current challenges, though there are a few moderate ones that have zero chance of coming to fruition.

Calls for a Tote monopoly are a million, while suggestions that we should ‘lose’ 300 fixtures a year and summer jumping in its entirety are a double figure price with precious few takers.

No, the road to making British Flat racing more attractive is paved with a long list of relatively small-scale proposals that, added together, ought to make for a more compelling game all round.

And so, with tin hat at the ready, it’s time to bid farewell to a swathe of fillies’ handicaps.

Yes, I know Royal Ascot’s Sandringham Handicap would like a word and she, along with a few other valuable events at the big festivals, is well worth retaining.

But the plethora of ordinary fillies’ handicaps that pepper the calendar during the summer bring little to the party other than an a significant increase in potential for small fields and the chance for ordinary horses to nick a race against mediocre opposition.

Breeders wouldn’t welcome a cull – and nor would some trainers who have mined the existing system very efficiently - but a BHA rating is a BHA rating irrespective of sex and the case for giving filles a slew of extra opportunities when open handicaps have been struggling to fill like never before looks suspect at best.

There were twelve such contests on the Flat last week - eight of which attracted disappointing fields of between three and seven – and this week’s total also runs into double figures.

That’s the equivalent of almost four full meetings in the space of just a fortnight given over solely to fillies’ handicaps. It’s clearly too many in the current climate - and the time to brandish the expulsion tool at most of them is already well overdue.

Mothballs at the ready as tracks prepare for the winter pinch

Speaking of good and bad ideas, have you heard about the Mothball Effect?

No, it’s not a new name for Nicky Henderson’s winter strategy but an intriguing new policy that could become widespread on racecourses all over Britain as the energy crisis kicks in over the next few months.

Several racecourse managers expect fuel costs to double or even treble as the jumps season gathers pace, with the RP reporting that Kelso’s latest energy quote came in at an eye-watering £257,000 a year.

Kelso boss Jonathan Garratt is determined that one of Britain’s most colourful jumps tracks can ride out the storm but other tracks are less confident and plans to minimise financial damage by closing sizeable areas of various grandstands on days when space isn’t at a premium are already well advanced.

Of course, huddling together for warmth is nothing new for diehard fans of the winter game.

“We have to consider all available options given the quotes we’ve received,” says one exec who has seen the figures, though there is no news as to whether a job lot of fast-boiling new kettles has been ordered to keep costs to an absolute minimum.

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