A Festival Strategy

The greatest pleasures in life?

I found a list the other day, based on a poll of 3,000, which included: "being surprised with chocolates or flowers", "making a new friend" and "old people holding hands".   

What a load of shite. 

We're talking about LIFE here. "Life! Life! To have erections!" as Flaubert said.

Old people holding hands!  I'll tell you one of life's real pleasures.  It's an ante-post voucher for the Cheltenham Festival that radiates those long winter months.

In my view, an enduring source of ante-post value lies in Ireland.

Going against the crowd

Over the last 10 years 40/108 of the Grade 1 races run at the Festival have been won by Irish raiders (37%).

Looking more closely:

• as we all know, they've made the bumper their own: 7/10 (not won it since Dunguib in 2009 mind), 

• while they do poorly with the youngsters in the Triumph Hurdle (1/10), they're mustard with the more mature novice hurdlers: 6/10 in the Supreme, 5/10 in the Neptune and 2/4 in the 3 miler,

• they're not quite so hot in the novice chases but still pretty good (3/10 in the Arkle and 4/10 in the SunAlliance), and

•  in the big championships they have a mixed record: 5/10 in the Champion Hurdle, 5/10 in the Queen Mother, but only 2/10 in the Gold Cup and strangely 0/10 in the World Hurdle (in fact you have to go back to poor old Dorans Pride in 1995 for the winner of that one, which seems a lifetime ago). 

Yet despite this record, Irish-trained horses are often under-rated by our bookmaker brethren in their ante-post lists. God knows why, because they usually need little encouragement to slash a price.

Already this Autumn we've seen some serious performances across the water from the likes of Last Instalment, Mount Benbulben and Bog Warrior, albeit on desperate ground unlikely to be found at Cheltenham in March.  It'll soon be time to start adding these types to our Festival portfolio ("portfolio" being one of those words acquired by punters to make their gambling appear more seemly).