by Bill Barich
Truckers Tavern, Alexander Banquet, and Irish Hussar were the first to drop from contention. Therealbandit jumped like a novice—no surprise there—and never got into the race, another gamble lost. The speedy pace ate up Keen Leader, and when he blundered four fences from home, he was done for. First Gold also blew that fence, but he hung on to the lead, although his tail was dragging. Best Mate, on his heels, began to quicken. As the horses galloped toward the third-last, it looked as if Matey would break free again in his patented, headlong rush, but instead the unimaginable happened. Paul Carberry rose up on Harbour Pilot and boxed in Culloty and Best Mate behind the leg-weary First Gold, trapping them on the rail.
This was a smart, aggressive bit of riding. Carberry had called Culloty’s bluff. If you think you deserve special treatment, he was saying, you’ve got another think coming. You cheeky bugger, Jimbo! Any jockey worth his salt would have done the same—and Culloty knew it—but Matey’s public disapproved. They wanted to see history made and viewed the move as vaguely sinister, a mean trick only a blackguard Irishman would pull, so they cheered for Best Mate, except in our group, where the chant was, “C’mon, Paul!” Culloty had to act quickly. He checked his horse for a split second and swung wide to get around First Gold and Harbour Pilot for an unobstructed run. That was aggressive, too. It cost Best Mate a step or two, but I hardly noticed because Sir Rembrandt was storming up the hill.
Could Sir Rembrandt actually win? It was too far-fetched, wasn’t it? I couldn’t invest in the fantasy, afraid I’d jinx the horse. As First Gold’s legs began to quit, Best Mate and Harbour Pilot jumped the second-last together, but Sir Rembrandt committed a minor error, and that, I figured, would be that. But no, Sir Rembrandt was all heart and picked up again, a force still to be reckoned with—the wild card in the deck. The script called for Best Mate to accelerate as usual now and assert his right to join the pantheon of Gold Cup immortals, but Carberry hadn’t read it. For once, Matey was in a serious battle—a real bare-knuckles bout. Harbour Pilot wouldn’t roll over, and Sir Rembrandt kept gaining ground, but Best Mate found some more, labored on, and beat my horse by a half-length.
The crowd went wild. Here was the happy ending they craved, a fulfillment of every expectation and desire. Henrietta Knight burst from the press tent to hug her teary-eyed husband, while the Irish gathered around Carberry to congratulate him on the superb ride. The debate over whether or not Best Mate was better than Arkle, or vice-versa, raged on in all the bars long into the night. I glanced at the teenage waiter, who stared disconsolately at his ticket, as though it forecast his future. His dream of riches was in tatters, and so was mine—by a measly half-length! Since Sir Rembrandt was a 33–1 shot, why hadn’t I backed him each way? Another riddle for the ages, as unanswerable as those Moscow Flyer posed. Evidently, there were still gaps in my education that needed to be closed.
The Irish had no more winners at the Festival. Ted Walsh came close with Never Compromise in the Christie’s Foxhunter Steeplechase, second to the ancient Earthmover, as did Charlie Swan in the Grand Annual with Ground Ball, who made St. Pirran work for the victory. No horses from Ireland ran in the Cathcart Challenge Cup, and the five entered in the Vincent O’Brien County Hurdle failed to place. Ruby Walsh, deputizing for the injured Robert Thornton, took the County Hurdle, the Festival’s conclusion, on Sporazene and earned the top jockey award despite his abysmal start with three wins from fifteen rides.
I cashed one of my four bets—the one on St. Pirran—and shut my betting book. Sad to say, I never surmounted my losses and finished in the red, down about $250. It could have been much worse if I hadn’t controlled my impulses (finally) and decided against going for broke on the County Hurdle. That lesson, at least, had sunk in. I felt strange after the last race, though, and I suspect others did, too, because our little utopian bubble had abruptly burst. It shouldn’t have come as a shock that the Festival was over, and yet it did. Sheep still grazed on Cleve Hill, but the horses had gone away. Our real lives were out there waiting for us, dimly glimpsed but beckoning, and as the shock began to wear off, I was eager to reclaim my own.
THEN I WAS HURTLING through the night on a bus bound for Birmingham Airport, a Festival veteran who’d been at Cheltenham on the day Best Mate won his third straight Gold Cup. Already I was polishing up my version of the race to brighten the narrative effect. The story would stand me in good stead at O’Herlihy’s when I was an aged yarn-spinner surrounded by callow youths hungry for such tales. They’d take me for an authentic and reliable source of historical information, and I’d try not to disappoint them, although I had a strong feeling I’d lie about my bet on Sir Rembrandt and say I played the horse each way. Would I admit to coming home a loser? That’s an interesting question, I thought, tapping a box in my jacket pocket that held a gold bracelet. It depends on how you look at it.
Away
On a fine May morning in Dublin, just after Giacomo won the 2005 Kentucky Derby and I’d donated twenty bucks to Paddy Power on behalf of Afleet Alex, I walked out to the garden shed where I work. The first shoots of lettuce had sprouted in our vegetable patch, a welcome hint that summer, never a sure thing in Ireland, might actually arrive. No birds were at the feeder nearby. The sparrows who outnumber and outmaneuver the blue tits were gone for the moment, flying over the city on an errand known only to themselves. I remembered Gautier’s white pigeons, those poor hirelings of the bookies. In a dreamy mood, I was subject to idle fancies in the way of Moscow Flyer.
So much had happened during the past year. Whenever I thought about Moscow, I recalled Jerome Kern’s “Pick Yourself Up.” It could have served as his theme song. He’d done a terrific job of starting over. Only two weeks after the disastrous Queen Mother, Moscow dusted himself off and won a big steeplechase at Aintree, then went to Punchestown in April and won another good race before being turned out for his holiday on the grass. When he came back to the track in October for the Fortria at Navan again, he looked splendid, and Jessie said she’d send him to Sandown next for a rematch with Azertyuiop in the Tingle Creek in December—his fourth race after three wins.
It was almost too much to bear. If Moscow had another accident, I’d be forced to admit the world operates on principles that only Henrietta Knight understands. She’d been consumed with Best Mate since the Festival, because her horse was an industry now. He had his own line of clothing (for human beings), and the Courage Enclosure at Cheltenham had been named after him—better than a bar, even. His season would start at Exeter in November, in a race created especially for him. Jim Culloty had a broken thumb, so who’d be Matey’s jockey? Knight pushed for Timmy Murphy, while Jim Lewis wanted Tony McCoy. Old feuds die hard, and Murphy got the nod.
If Best Mate really was a wonder horse, his third Gold Cup didn’t prove it. According to the form book, he beat a weak field by historical standards. The comparisons to Arkle seemed ever more far-fetched. His outing at Exeter, deemed so important to the nation that the BBC broadcast it live on a weekday, did little to change that impression. Only three opponents took him on, including Sir Rembrandt (another losing bet for yours truly), but he barely squeaked by Martin Pipe’s Seebald, who had just a four-pound advantage. The champ was vulnerable, and that was heartening news for Michael Hourigan, who still believed in Beef Or Salmon.
Reilly and I watched the Tingle Creek at O’Herlihy’s, where I was finally accepted as a full-fledged regular and entitled to be cranky if I found someone sitting in my chosen spot—a table close to a gas fire I insisted I deserved, being a Californian not yet entirely accustomed to Irish winters. On the other hand, so many aspects of Irish life were old familiars to me now, and I liked that feeling of belonging, of being a link in the chain of community, liked coming home from the pub to see Imelda’s sons turning into young men, even as I got older and ever-so-slightly wiser.
On a living room wall, we’d hung a new painting of Imelda’s. Working from photos, she had pictured herself as a college girl in Amster dam an
d me as a budding hippie circa 1969—long hair, cool shades, I was bound for San Francisco, man. The images flowed seamlessly together, as if that were destiny’s desire as well as our own. O mystical lady! Often I stood before the painting and thought about the thousands of miles I’d traveled, blindly at times, to be where I was, and I’d bow to the great unknown that haunts us all. The falls I’d taken, the missteps and false starts—no wonder I identified with the jumpers.
I had backed Moscow Flyer in the Tingle Creek, and not for peanuts, so I was panicky before the race and had to order a medicinal Jameson to calm my nerves. Superstitions are mere phantoms and ought to be ignored—I knew that—but when Moscow put in a messy jump at the ninth fence, I almost keeled over. Was he as doomed as a character in a Greek tragedy? For a couple of seconds, I imitated Henrietta Knight and hid my eyes, but when I looked again, Moscow had recovered his stride and briskly disposed of Azertyuiop to reclaim his title as the best two-mile chaser around, at least for the time being. The Queen Mother and the challenge of Pipe’s Well Chief lay ahead.
So the Pattern was put to rest, along with sundry demons. The world was an enlightened place where reason, not phantoms, ruled. It followed, then, that Best Mate would improve after the Exeter race and demonstrate his superiority in the Lexus (formerly Ericsson) Chase at Leopardstown, but Beef Or Salmon wasn’t a gawky adolescent anymore. He had a new steadiness. With Timmy Murphy suspended, Paul Carberry snatched up the ride and never had it so good. While Matey puffed and labored, Beef Or Salmon was so keen to run that Carberry couldn’t hold him up, so he relaxed and let the horse jump its way to an easy, seven-length victory.
Passing the finish, Carberry’s high spirits got the best of him. He stood up in his stirrups, glanced back at Jim Culloty, and gestured with a cupped hand, as if to say, “C’mon, Jimmy boy, catch me if you can!” There were echoes of Cheltenham in the gesture, traces of the last time the two had locked horns, so this was sweet revenge. For his antics, Carberry got a mild slap on the wrist from the stewards, while Michael Hourigan flew off to Lanzarote to celebrate with his wife.
The ground at Leopardstown displeased Best Mate, Knight said later. But she also said a more telling thing: great horses win on any ground, so Matey might only be very good. Still, she swore the champ would be ready to defend his crown at the Festival, but here, too, she was stymied. Only a week before the big meeting, Best Mate burst a blood vessel and had to withdraw, leaving the door wide open for Beef Or Salmon—or so I thought. Sadly, though, the Beefster reverted to type at Cheltenham, half-awake and dragging his feet, and Carberry had to pull him up. He didn’t even complete the race.
Kicking King was our new hero. Now seven, he’d been advancing his Gold Cup case for months. He won the Durkan at Punchestown and the King George VI, and Tom Taaffe had him primed for the Cotswolds when the horse fell ill in early March. Taaffe was sick at heart himself and nearly gave up on the trip, but Kicking King conquered the bug and miraculously regained his momentum. Stronger than ever, he took charge under Barry Geraghty at the fourth-last fence, and from three out there was no doubt he’d be the first Irish-trained winner in many years. That was thrilling for Geraghty; even better, Moscow Flyer defeated Well Chief in the Queen Mother.
All is flux, Heraclitus said. Now the horses were gorging on grass in lush pastures, but soon they’d be in training, and the cycle would begin once more. I wondered if I’d ever attend the Festival again, balancing the potential fun against the abominable expense, another toss-up. As I sat daydreaming, I saw a solitary blue tit land on the bird feeder, its little eyes flicking about, on the lookout for that bossy gang of sparrows as it pecked hastily at the seeds and gulped them down in a hurry. Then the sparrows descended with a noisy flurry of wings, back from their mysterious errand, and the blue tit disappeared. Where did it go? Into the slipstream of eternal questions, maybe, where people ask: Has anybody seen my hat? What’s for dinner? Who’ll win the Gold Cup?
Acknowledgments
I am most grateful to Tamso Doyle of Horse Racing Ireland, who provided the introductions, racing know-how, and general good cheer that made the writing of this book so much more pleasant than it might have been. The Racing Post was an indispensable tool, particularly the dispatches of Michael Clower and Tony O’Hehir, its chief Irish correspondents, as were the richly informative pages of The Irish Field. Of the writers listed in the bibliography, I am most indebted to Raymond Smith, a fine racing journalist, whose books were a helpful source on both John P. McManus and Vincent O’Brien. T. P. Reilly is a pseudonym, as is O’Herlihy’s, an essential precaution to protect my table by the gas fire. Wherever necessary, I have translated euros and pounds sterling into dollars, but the figures should be taken as rough estimates only.
My heartfelt thanks, of course, to the trainers, jockeys, and bookies who gave so generously of their time, poured tea into me when I was cold, and answered my sometimes bone-headed questions with grace. Without their kind assistance, there’d be no book at all.
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