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At Cheltenham, any horse which comes home in front with Irish money riding on it is wafted into the Cheltenham winner’s enclosure on a wave of enthusiasm. ‘The Irish are at the centre of the party,’ says Cheltenham’s managing director, Edward Gillespie. ‘They take centre stage in the pubs and clubs in town as well as at the racecourse.’
About a sixth of the 350-plus runners over the four days of the festival are trained in Ireland, but Ireland usually has more than a sixth of the winners. In 2006, there were ten Irish victories in the 26 races with an Irish-trained 1-2-3 in the Gold Cup. The first four home in the Champion Hurdle were Irish-trained too. Seven of the 26 winners at the 2010 festival were ‘Irish victories’, that is they were horses trained in Ireland. But 15 of those 26 winners were bred in Ireland and 20 of the 26 races were won by Irish-born jockeys.
Without the Irish, thronging the Guinness village and punting fearlessly, it simply wouldn’t be Cheltenham. But how long will they keep coming? For some years the era of cheap travel boosted the Irish contingent flocking across the sea to support their fancies at the festival to 8,000 or more. Others start closer. Says Edward Gillespie, ‘People from the Home Counties will come here and behave as if they are Irish for a week in a way they couldn’t if they went to Sandown Park.’ And for a while there were more Irish-owned horses for them to punt on. In the days before EU money stuffed the Celtic tiger, Ireland’s horse economy concentrated on breeding horses to sell to English owners. But then came the golden years. As Curragh-based trainer Dessie Hughes puts it: ‘There was a time when everyone in Ireland had money and they weren’t selling their horses. In the Seventies and Eighties most good horses won a bumper (a flat race for jumping horses) here and then went over to Fulke Walwyn or Fred Winter or whoever. In the Nineties they weren’t for sale. There were some terrific years at Cheltenham.’
But the recession has hit hard. In Ireland betting, prize money, sponsorship, attendances, the number of horses in training and registered owners are all in decline. Bloodstock sales, with old trends reasserting, are showing a small increase, but apart from a few big names like the financier J.P. McManus and Ryanair chief Michael O’Leary, many of Ireland’s owners are in retreat. So are the Irish spectators. Statistics cannot be exact — nobody asks the Irish to show their passports at the gate — but bookings through major travel agencies fell by around a third at last year’s festival and indications are of another 10 per cent drop this year.
Sadder still are persistent tales about horses taken to the bloodstock sales in Ireland, led out unsold and never taken home, about ex-racehorses traded down the chain until they are turned loose on hills and bogs by owners who can no longer afford to feed them. Stories of horses traded for mobile phones may not be just urban myths, and while horse welfare charities are running out of space, Irish slaughterhouses feeding the French and Belgian restaurant industries have reported a boom in business.
The top trainer Willie Mullins says the impact of the declining economy will have a huge effect on racing over the next two years. ‘There are very few locally owned horses going to Irish trainers. There are many more trainer-owned horses running in bumpers than ever before. That has to impact down the line.’ And when I visited his Co. Tipperary yard in the autumn, Mouse Morris summed up the problem: ‘We have to be bloody good salesmen, because we’re selling something nobody needs.’ The Irish, however, may take longer than most to accept that.
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