The sight of a dozen nimble-footed dancers hop-jigging and reeling below the paddock under the inscrutable gaze of the life-size bronze statue of the former champion jockey AP McCoy could mean only one thing. Suspicions were quickly confirmed by a quick visit to the nearby Guinness Village, where racegoers wearing appropriately coloured scarves distributed by a well known banter-bookie were being entertained by a fiddle-heavy folk band milking traditional Irish hits.
Welcome to St Patrick’s Thursday at the Festival, an occasion branded in blarney when the sometimes tiresome paddywhackery could scarcely seem more forced short of racecourse officials ordering jockeys to replace their whips with knobbly sticks. Scratch beneath the emerald veneer, however, and all is not quite what it seems. It turns out the shivering dance troupe hail from Coventry, the musicians call Manchester home and these days the bookmaker behind the gaudy green neckwear is more readily associated with Malta than Mullingar. Nevertheless, after a subdued day when the Festival attracted its second-lowest attendance for any afternoon’s racing since its expansion to four days in 2005, any atmosphere, however contrived and cliched, was worthy of the traditional 100,000 Irish welcomes.
Plenty of Brits didn’t get the memo. In the opening Turners Novices’ Chase, English trainers saddled the first three home, a remarkable feat given Irish dominance at this year’s Festival and one that plunged Willie Mullins into an unforeseen losing streak after he had removed his fedora and waved his bat to all corners of the racecourse upon notching up his Festival century late the previous afternoon.
Based in Alcester, a Midsomer-ish town near Stratford-upon-Avon that could scarcely be more English, Dan Skelton sent out Grey Dawning to take the opener under an assured ride from younger brother Harry. The partnership held off the Paul Nicholls-trained Ginny’s Destiny on the climb to the line, with the big-priced outsider Djelo following them home for Venetia Williams to keep invading trainers off the podium for the first time in 14 races at this year’s Festival.
On an afternoon that only got more Irish with the arrival of a downpour on an already damp Prestbury Park during the second race, Nicholls and his fellow trainers Mel Rowley and Nigel Twiston-Davies repeated the feat by combining for an English one-two-three in the Pertemps Final Handicap Hurdle. The rain failed to dampen the enthusiasm of Sir Alex Ferguson, a co-owner of the 25-1 winner Monmiral, who had to be reminded that, yes, this was indeed his first ever Festival winner. “What a jockey,” he said of the horse’s pilot Harry Cobden. “He was amazing. A champion in the making? He’s got a chance.”
Asked by ITV’s Matt Chapman if winning the Pertemps was as good as winning the Champions League, Ferguson hesitated before deciding “it is different”. Unqualified to make the comparison but looking no less delighted than his former sparring partner, Harry Redknapp would later welcome home his charge and namesake, the Plate Handicap Chase winner Shakem Up’Arry, on a remarkable day for football managers of the old school. More readily associated with a famous treble, in the meantime Ferguson made it a quickfire double when Protektorat hosed up in the Ryanair Chase. It was another win for the brothers Skelton which made it England 3-0 Ireland on a St Patrick’s Thursday in which Irish thunder was being stolen by assorted Englishmen and a famously proud Scot.
Just 24 hours previously, a post by an astute but unknown observer on X, formerly Twitter, had gone viral. “If the Cheltenham Festival was a footballer playing under Alex Ferguson, it would’ve been sold to Everton 18 months ago,” it read. “He just knew when a player’s best days were behind him.” Quite apart from the fact that Everton have enough to worry about and certainly couldn’t afford it, the goofy grin of pleasure adorning the former Manchester United manager’s chops as he saw his winners romp home suggested he wouldn’t yet be quite ready to consign these steeplechasing Olympics to comparative obscurity.
No strangers to rebellion in the face of an English onslaught, it was only a matter of time before the Irish resistance in the face of Thursday’s unexpected and impertinent English slap-down bore fruit and it came in the shape of the well-fancied Teahupoo. Saddled by Gordon Elliott, the mount of Jack Kennedy powered home to lead an Irish trio home, restore the natural order and get a first winner for the week on the board for the trainer from Cullentra House. A first win for Ireland on the day, the 11th of the week. Normality somewhat restored, time to paint the town green.
