John Ingles looks at the Cheltenham record of the champion Irish trainer who died in July and in whose memory Saturday's Paddy Power Gold Cup will be run.
Saturday’s Paddy Power Gold Cup will be run in memory of Edward O’Grady, who died in July at the age of 75, in recognition of the great success the County Tipperary trainer had at Cheltenham during his lengthy career.
Those wins included the 2009 renewal of the Paddy Power Gold Cup with the white-faced Tranquil Sea. Like many of the stable’s Cheltenham raiders over the years, Tranquil Sea came in for good support and was sent off the 11/2 favourite in a field of sixteen. However, the combination of soft ground and a sound pace took its toll on many of the runners, with only half the field completing, but Tranquil Sea made light of the conditions, jumping superbly under a confident ride from Andrew McNamara.
Soon in control after three out, he just needed to be shaken up on the run-in to account for Poquelin, one of three in the field trained by Paul Nicholls. Tranquil Sea was the first Irish-trained winner of the Paddy Power Gold Cup since 1980 when Bright Highway won what was then the Mackeson.
The high-class Tranquil Sea held his own in graded races in Ireland that same season, winning the Poplar Square Chase at Naas prior to the Paddy Power Gold Cup, and the Newlands Chase at Leopardstown but was well held when returning to Cheltenham for the Ryanair Chase at the Festival.
O’Grady didn’t have too many more runners at the Festival, his final one being Kitten Rock in the 2015 Champion Hurdle, but it had been a very different story much earlier in his career when only two Festivals went by between 1974 and 1984 without at least one O’Grady-trained winner.
His father Willie, a three-time champion jockey in Ireland (once jointly), had himself trained winners at what was then known as the National Hunt meeting. Chief among those was Kinloch Brae, winner of the Cathcart Chase in 1969, while he also sent out Solfen to win the Broadway Novices’ Chase and Spa Hurdle (nowadays the Brown Advisory and the Stayers’ Hurdle) on consecutive days at the 1960 meeting.
Edward O’Grady took over the running of the stable on his father’s death, training his first winner in 1972, and it wasn’t long before he had his first Festival winner when Mr Midland won the National Hunt Chase, ridden by future fellow trainer Mouse Morris. But much the best of his Festival winners that decade, and indeed his entire career, was the brilliant but ill-fated novice hurdler Golden Cygnet.
Bought by O’Grady himself for 980 guineas as an unbroken three-year-old, Golden Cygnet was unbeaten in four starts over hurdles in Ireland before he lined up as the 5/4 favourite against 17 rivals in the 1978 Supreme Novices’ Hurdle in which he toyed with his rivals as his essay in Chasers & Hurdlers put it.
'Golden Cygnet was pulling over his field coming to the second last and as soon as his rider [Niall ‘Boots’ Madden] let him go he shot clear, jumped the last superbly and strode majestically up the final hill to win running away by fifteen lengths. The others might as well have stayed in their boxes.'
After another win back in Ireland at Fairyhouse, Golden Cygnet then took on some of the best hurdlers around in the Scottish Champion Hurdle, a race which sealed his place among the leading hurdlers of the last fifty years but was sadly also to be his last. The handicapper had allotted him 11-13, just 1 lb below the Champion Hurdle runner-up Sea Pigeon (with whom he started the 7/4 joint-favourite at Ayr) and conceding 5 lb to the Champion Hurdle third Night Nurse. The latter was already a dual Champion Hurdle by then, a feat Sea Pigeon would match.
Golden Cygnet was challenging the leader Night Nurse, looking all over the winner, when he took a bad fall at the final flight, handing victory instead to Sea Pigeon, though the general feeling was that Golden Cygnet would have won had he not come to grief. Timeform rated Golden Cygnet 176 that season, ahead of both Sea Pigeon (175) and Night Nurse (170) and just 1 lb behind the Champion Hurdle winner Monksfield.
It was another novice hurdler who provided O’Grady with another significant Festival victory when Mister Donovan landed a gamble in the 1982 Sun Alliance Novices’ Hurdle, a race O’Grady had already won two years earlier with the future Whitbread Gold Cup winner Drumlargan.
Significant because Mister Donovan, who hadn’t won any of his races over hurdles in Ireland beforehand, raced in the colours of Irish bookmaker J. P. McManus and became his first Festival winner. ‘I’ve often said that if he didn’t win, I might not have had any of the others’ says McManus O’Grady was therefore instrumental in McManus going on to become easily the most successful owner in Festival history, providing four of the first five Cheltenham winners in the green and gold hoops.
Mister Donovan was soon followed by Bit of A Skite winning the National Hunt Chase (and Irish Grand National) a year later, while O’Grady and McManus had to wait until 1994 for their next two Festival winners together when Time For A Run won the Coral Cup and the mare Mucklemeg won what was then the Festival Bumper.
Speaking after the trainer’s death, McManus described O’Grady as ‘something special’, adding ‘when Edward fancied a horse, and gave you the office, you didn’t need to have money, all you needed to have was credit, because you always felt he would deliver. His record was second to none at that time.’
Indeed, O’Grady was firmly established at the top of his profession by the time of Mister Donovan’s victory as he became champion trainer in Ireland for the fourth year running in 1980.
His revival in the 1990s brought another Festival double that decade – Ventana Canyon in the Arkle and a third National Hunt Chase with Loving Around – in 1996, while three more winners this century – the Jamie Spencer-ridden Pizarro in the 2002 Champion Bumper, Back In Front in the 2003 Supreme and Sky’s The Limit who hacked up in the 2006 Coral Cup – took O’Grady’s final total of Festival winners to 18.
Tranquil Sea’s Paddy Power Gold Cup victory was O'Grady's final winner at Cheltenham. Doubtless McManus will be particularly keen to win this year's renewal with Jagwar, who is the current ante-post favourite.
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