by Bill Barich
Jessie dodged the bullet. Her feelings were probably the last thing she cared to reveal, so she spoke about the Queen Mother and how much simpler it was to bring Moscow Flyer back this year, a cheerful note I liked. She swore there was less agonizing, as well, although I didn’t buy it, not after seeing how difficult it is to get an Irish horse to the Festival in one piece, much less win a race in England after hard travel and before a hometown crowd. Since the 1998–99 season, Noel Meade had had just one winner from forty-two runners—and he kissed the ground after that race—Willie Mullins was two for forty-two, and O’Grady was two for twenty. Only Jessie was an exception with four winners from nine entries, the best percentage by far.
Around noon, with the races two hours away, I sat by the parade ring and watched a master of ceremonies conduct interviews with such luminaries as Pipe and John P. McManus, who was as cool as ever in spite of the stakes. He had five horses entered that afternoon, three in the Champion Hurdle, yet he radiated serenity. When a groom led Istabraq into the ring, shipped to Cheltenham from McManus’s farm in Limerick, the fans applauded mightily, and Istabraq responded with a powerful buck, as a man might tip his hat to an admiring crowd. It was a lovely moment and all about the horse, as Ted Walsh would say.
In an hour or so, that lovely moment had fled, and my nerves were frazzled. As impatient as I was for the Festival to begin, I dreaded the mental challenge ahead. If I hoped to achieve my goal of going home a winner, I had to kill off my partiality toward the Irish, block any sentimental wagers, and stick to my three-bet plan with the icy calm of a hired gun. During my belated study period at the Twigworth, I’d only had time to comb through the first two races, though. My picks were Brave Inca in the Supreme Novices and Pipe’s Well Chief in the Arkle Chase. For a third horse, I chose Chicuelo, also trained by Pipe, in the William Hill Handicap Chase, but that was just a stab in the dark.
Ireland had seven runners in the Supreme Novices, among them Willie Mullins’s Arch Stanton and Euro Leader. Ruby Walsh had won on both, but as Paul Nicholls’s stable jock, he was obligated to ride Albuhera. As for Barry Geraghty, he’d made a late switch from Garde Champetre to O’Grady’s John Oliver. What had gone down at that press conference? Had they cooked up something? I was curious, but a hired gun can’t be swayed by such trifles, so I put twenty to win on Brave Inca. At first, I thought I’d kissed the money good-bye, because Arch Stanton looked invincible, but he fizzled and let Conor O’Dwyer on War Of Attrition storm to the lead. Yet Barry Cash on Brave Inca was right there, too, casting a long shadow, and he wore down O’Dwyer’s horse as they battled up the hill.
All at once, the fabled Irish victory cry rose around me, a bellow of sheer unadulterated joy that had in it the roar of the ancient high kings, of Finn McCool and Brian Boru, and a touch of Molly Malone’s melodious pitch for cockles and mussels, and most definitely the echo of well-oiled voices bouncing off the cobbled streets of old Dublin through an eternity of late-night exits from a thousand different pubs. Men were hugging one another, holding up fistfuls of bills, raising cups of beer, and singing, of course, off-key at times and yet unashamedly, with force and vigor. When Brave Inca passed down the chute on his return trip, the fans ran along the rail to accompany him, waving and reaching out, a couple of them in tears, and Barry Cash smiled and thanked them with a salute of his whip, a very god on horseback.
Young Colm Murphy was waiting for Brave Inca in the winner’s enclosure. “That’s the nearest I’ve ever been to a heart attack,” he said with a shiver.
THE IRISH WERE off to a brilliant start. They might have been dosed with helium, so giddily were they behaving. Their momentum was building, too, since they held some aces in the Arkle Chase—Central House, Colca Canyon, and Kicking King. As often as certain people (Geraghty, Noel O’Brien) had touted Kicking King to me, I stuck to the plan and bet twenty to win on Well Chief. Tony McCoy, who was Pipe’s principal rider, preferred him to Puntal, another from the Pipe yard. Jockeys don’t always choose correctly, but I had a hunch about McCoy—a vibe, let’s call it. I believed he believed Well Chief was special, even though the horse had just one chase (and one win) to his name.
Had any jockey ever looked as grim and determined in the paddock as McCoy? I doubted it. Nearly thirty, with a face so starved of fat it was skeletal, the cheek and jaw bones in stark definition, he seemed in a state of perpetual misery. “Yes, and I’ll stay miserable,” he once threatened, “and I’ll keep winning.” As Britain’s leading jump jockey every season for the past eight years, McCoy had a strike rate of twenty-six percent and at least fifty more wins than his nearest challenger. He was fitter this season, too, after a disciplined routine of gym workouts, and also riding better than ever, down low in the saddle for a tighter grip on his horse.
Cocky, aggressive, and strong, those were McCoy’s trademarks. In the Arkle, he kept Well Chief out of trouble at the back, while Geraghty pushed Kicking King up with the pace. Thisthatandtother, the favorite, came to grief at the second fence, and five other horses fell or unseated their riders in a very sloppy race. With so many gone, McCoy saw a clear path on the inside and zipped along it. Well Chief was just too much for Kicking King, who had to settle for the second spot, as he’d done in the Supreme Novices last year. A momentary silence descended on the Irish, but my own feet were a few inches off the ground.
There was a story behind Well Chief’s success, I later learned. Pipe, the master manipulator, had pulled off another stroke, or betting coup, laying out his horse for the Arkle over the past two weeks. Every day Well Chief had been schooled over thirty fences to counteract his lack of experience in chases—a fact that didn’t turn up in the Post or travel far beyond the confines of Pipe’s yard. Serious punters steered clear of Well Chief because he was lightly raced over the birch, so David Johnson, his owner, was able to back him at 33–1 ante-post, while small fry like me, who were out of the loop, were thrilled to get him at 9–1 on the day.
My betting book was a thing of beauty. I was two-for-two and had earned a profit of almost three hundred dollars. Now all I had to do was to sit back and enjoy the scenery until the William Hill, but I fell into a familiar trap. Infatuated with my own intelligence, and convinced I was in harmony with the universal flow, I ditched the three-bet plan and dropped fifty to win on Rigmarole, certain he could upset Rooster Booster in the Champion Hurdle, the afternoon’s centerpiece with the fattest pot.
Rooster Booster looked eminently beatable on paper. The stats were dead against him. He was ten, and only three ten-year-olds had won the Champion Hurdle in seventy-four years. Also, the Rooster had run poorly in his races this season, because he failed to get the fast pace he requires—or such was Phillip Hobbs’s excuse. His one magnificent outing at Newbury in February, where he gave away seventeen pounds to Geos and only lost by a stride, had cost him some energy, plus three horses in the field had already beaten him at level weights, including Rigmarole. The fans supported him, though, and sent him off as the favorite, with Richard Johnson riding.
The race set up ideally for the champ. Hardy Eustace, one of four Irish entries (and dismissed by the punters at 33–1) took the lead at a good gallop, so Hobbs and Johnson got the pace they needed. Like Rooster Booster, Hardy Eustace had fared badly this season, losing all four starts and bothered by sore shins, but he seemed to have revived. In first-time blinkers, he ran loose and free and rebuffed every thrust until Johnson came at him. Rooster Booster was electrifying as he slashed through the field from far back, but Hardy Eustace refused to buckle, and the big gray horse’s surge fell short by five lengths.
Again that monumental cry engulfed us. What an amazing afternoon for Ireland! Exactly as described in the anecdotal literature, I got carried away. So I’d just lost fifty smackers—so what? The heady atmosphere had me in a whirl. Hired killer, my eye. I couldn’t control a single impulse and launched myself on a string of sorry wagers. In the William Hill, I forgot about Chicuelo, who lost, and backed Marlborough, anoth
er loser, and next the loser Jasmin D’Oudairies in the Challenge Cup. Trying to get even on the last race (“pure gravy for the bookies”), I lost on Keepatem, who was trounced by Creon, a 50–1 shot. J. P. McManus owned both horses, and no doubt he’d backed both, too. That did little to heal my troubled psyche.
Later that night, I lay in my lonely Twigworth bed and licked my wounds. Having closed down my accounts, I was still up $120—not too shabby, really, given the error of my ways. Down the hallway at intervals came guests retreating from the bar, their voices hoarse from the drink, smoke, chatter, and cheers. They were busy inventing a narrative that would become the myth of this particular festival, each player’s tale of woe or glory a strand in the overarching brocade. Still ahead were the myth’s core events, the Queen Mother and the Gold Cup, after which the story would be over and ripe for countless retellings. Such were the lofty thoughts of a tired punter on the edge of sleep.
ON WEDNESDAY—St. Patrick’s Day—Moscow Flyer had a walk over the course in the early morning mist. “He’s himself,” Eamonn Leigh told the TV folks, a gnomic remark I interpreted as positive. Moscow figured prominently in my approach to the afternoon. I’d talked myself out of that silly, superstitious nonsense about the Pattern, replaying Barry Geraghty’s words in my mind. “He’s the ace in my pack,” Barry had said, and I trusted him. Why shouldn’t I? Moscow had already destroyed Azertyuiop once, so the horse was my banker—the key element in the three-bet strategy I’d stick to (definitely, absolutely) this time.
Then, too, I had virtue on my side. Rather than swap lies at the bar, I did my homework, retired early, and slept well, and that gave me a buoyant sensation of clarity that faded almost the second I got to the track. There were distractions everywhere, among them a pair of short chubby guys in leprechaun costumes who were hamming it up for the crowd, their faces painted green and their bloodshot eyes brimful of booze. I was in the midst of a Lorca rhapsody, caught in a swirl of green shirts and ties, green scarves and socks, green dresses and beer, and probably green underwear. Hawkers were even selling garlands of shamrocks by the gates and had the nerve to guarantee they’d bring good luck.
Arkle, Mill House, Cottage Rake, and Istabraq, they all had bars named in their honor, and the green hordes had already taken command of them with the authority of invading troops. No glass or bottle would go untipped today, not when there was a patron saint to be celebrated. The shepherd boy who imported Christianity to Ireland and banished every snake would be toasted repeatedly with a fierce, partisan energy, so I sought refuge from the bedlam in the Head on Stand, where for an extra thirty dollars, I could buy a seat to call my own, not insignificant when fifty thousand or so fans are aching for a place to rest.
Fundamentalist, Pizarro, and Moscow Flyer. Someday they, too, might have their own bars, but they were only my picks in the first three races at present. Fundamentalist had impressed me in a race at Haydock in February, plus Nigel Twiston-Davies, his trainer, had a yard near Cheltenham and did well at the track, so I chose the horse for the Royal and Sun Alliance Novices Hurdle, even though he was up against Inglis Drever, the best British novice in ages. Under Carl Llewellyn, Fundamentalist dawdled at the rear of the field, then burst to the front three hurdles out, trailed by Inglis Drever, who was in an ideal spot until he crashed into the second-last. There would be no catching Fundamentalist row, I believed, and I was already tallying the return on my bet when the horse grazed the last hurdle and lost a few strides. The race was on again with Inglis Drever closing rapidly, only to fall short by a half-length.
I let go of the breath I’d been holding. I had forty to win on Fundamentalist at 9–1, and that increased my profit to almost five hundred dollars. It was as if yesterday’s stupidity had never occurred. I was on top again, where I belonged. As ever, I saw my bulging wallet as a mere prelude to the riches yet to come and imagined how I’d spend the windfall, maybe on a trout-fishing trip to California. More important, though, was a gift for Imelda, so I did some window shopping at the Tented Village. How about some expensive boots from Dubarry of Ireland? Or a pashmina woven from the fleece of a Tibetan Capra Hircus goat? Exotic, yes, but I was leaning toward a simple gold bracelet when I had to leave for the Royal and Sun Alliance Chase.
Fifty to win on Pizarro, that was my wager, and I hesitated only a little. Our Vic, another horse from Tom Costello’s impeccable nursery, and one he had praised to the sky, looked to be a monster. He’d won three straight hurdles for Martin Pipe, then switched to fences and demolished a Grade Two field at Ascot. His odds stood at 11–8—too short, really, when you had such talented contenders as Mossy Green and Royal Emperor. As if to prove my point, Our Vic banged into the very first fence and jumped sketchily throughout, while Royal Emperor committed blunder after blunder and shook up Dominic Elsworth, his jockey, so badly Elsworth dropped his whip.
Yet both horses survived and stayed close to Mossy Green, the pacesetter. On the second circuit, Pizarro threw in an awkward jump over the water. He might have been spooked, because Irish courses don’t have water jumps. At the fourth-last, the race got very untidy. Calling Brave, who’d been error-free, clobbered the fence and lost his rider. Pizarro had recovered and traveled decently through the scramble, but Mossy Green misjudged the second-last, interfered with Pizarro, and brought my horse down. David Casey on Rule Supreme swung wide of the fallers and gained some ground. Our Vic was quitting, and Elsworth lacked a whip for the drive, so Rule Supreme held on to become the third Irish winner, and the only one from Willie Mullins’s seventeen entries.
THE IRISH WERE STILL gaily waving their flags when the horses entered the paddock for the Queen Mother Champion Chase. I’d placed my bet early, two hundred to win on Moscow Flyer at 10–11, and pressed my way into the front ranks to watch the Harrington team get him ready. The yard at Moone, the beech and lime trees, the Wicklow Mountains, and even Ireland itself seemed a galaxy away, and I saw Moscow as a stouthearted country horse up against the city slickers. Not that he looked like a bumpkin—no, he looked splendid, a tribute to all the work and care Jessie, Eamonn, and the others had lavished on him. I only hoped he would concentrate, really concentrate, and do the job for which they’d so thoroughly prepared him.
Azertyuiop did not look as good. He was washy, dripping sweat. “Excellent,” I muttered to myself. “May buckets of the stuff pour out of him.” Ruby Walsh’s bad-luck streak was another benefit for our side, I thought. Ruby had ridden five losers on Tuesday and two this afternoon, plus he’d just taken a fall on Mossy Green, but Barry Geraghty wasn’t doing much better, really. He hadn’t been on a winner yet, either, and had hit the deck with Pizarro, so egos were bruised all around. That made both jockeys hungrier than ever. The opposing colors of their silks reflected the tension. No costume designer could have done it any better. Walsh was as bold as a crocus in bright yellow, with a red star from the Mao era on his chest, while Geraghty wore black-and-white chevrons such as an escaped convict might sport, a thief out to steal the race. They were the only two in it, and they knew it.
The horses who contested the early lead, Cenkos, Ei Ei, and Eskley-brook, were destined to burn out. Meanwhile, Ruby played a waiting game on Azertyuiop, coasting along in mid-division behind Moscow Flyer. To keep from sweating myself, I remembered my talk with Jessie back in October and how she had explained why the Queen Mother suited Moscow. “The competition is so intense, he has to pay attention,” she’d said, whereas his mind wandered during Irish races because they unfold more slowly, only turning into a sprint at the end. And Moscow did seem attentive and very smooth until he reached the water jump—the same one that rattled Pizarro—and fouled up.
Some horses hate the water and can become phobic about it, although I doubted that was the case with Moscow. But I could see that the slight hitch had broken his rhythm, and rhythm is all in a fast-paced chase. Even Geraghty, an expert at restoring a horse’s balance, couldn’t get him right. Before my eyes, as if on a scrim, I saw the Pattern in en
ormous numbers and letters, 111 and then FUB. Navan, Sandown, and Leopardstown, that added up to three wins in a row, and I knew something awful was about to happen. Sure enough, Moscow jumped tentatively at the next fence, and at the one after that—an open ditch, the fourth-last—he lost his timing completely and paddled through it. Geraghty couldn’t hang on and landed on the ground.
The collective groan that greeted Geraghty’s flop was a melancholy counterpoint to that Irish victory cry. Heaps of cash had slipped into the bookies’ pockets, my own two hundred included. I could almost hear the howls in faraway Dublin. Incredibly, Moscow Flyer had done it again. What a quirky animal he was! Had he watched too much traffic in Moone and scrambled his brain waves, as kids do with computer games? There wasn’t any answer. Moscow would be a mystery forever to us human beings, even to Geraghty, his intimate companion, who was at a loss to account for the accident. “Stunned about sums it up,” he said.
For Jessie and Eamonn, it was a bitter defeat, their months of dedicated work smashed to bits in a few seconds. With his adversary gone, Azertyuiop mowed down the other horses, streaking clear by nine lengths. It was a win, all right, but not a definitive one. Instead, it recalled Moscow’s contests with Istabraq, those races decided by phantom blows. But for Ruby Walsh, who’d been adamant all along that Azertyuiop was too fresh in the Tingle Creek, not yet himself, the Queen Mother provided a welcome corrective, and he could ignore his recent spill, stand tall in the saddle, and shout, “Jaysus, what a relief!”
The rest of the afternoon dragged by for me. I was depressed, as if I’d taken a fall myself. I still had some of the house’s money, but it seemed like chump change after my elaborate fantasies—no fishing trip to California, that had vanished. I ignored the next two races and hoisted a Guinness at the bar where the leprechauns, ever less merry, were drowning their sorrows, then violated my three-bet plan again by throwing away fifty bucks on Fondmort (also again) in a handicap chase. That left only the Champion Bumper, where almost half of the twenty-four entries were from Ireland.