Punchestown Festival

Viking Flagship won the Champion Chase at Punchestown in 1993.  It wasn’t the Punchestown Champion Chase then though.  Not really.  Not as we understand it now.  It was a handicap, and Viking Flagship was 6lb out of it.  

If you were a student and you didn’t have a clapped-out car, or a friend who had a clapped-out car and who could be convinced to go to the races, you had to get the green bus, the 46A, into Dublin city centre and you had to get the red bus from Busáras to Punchestown.  You had to sign out for the day too at the UCD Smurfit School back then if you weren’t going to lectures, you had to say where you were going and what you were doing.  You could put down "Ilac Library: Research", but, on the first day of the Punchestown Festival, it was unlikely that many people would fully believe you.

The presence of Cheltenham’s Champion Chase runner-up Cyphrate in the BMW Handicap Chase that year, at the top of the weights, 12 stone, meant that six of Cyphrate’s seven rivals were out of the handicap.  Viking Flagship made light of the disadvantageous terms though, as the market expected he would.  

It didn’t look overly promising for favourite backers, mind you, when Ken Morgan on the Jim Dreaper-trained Foulksrath Castle headed him at the third last fence, but Viking Flagship wrested the lead back on the run to the final fence and he and Richard Dunwoody went on to win by just over two lengths from Jim Dreaper’s horse, the pair of them clear.

Richard Dunwoody rode a treble that day.  He won the two-and-a-quarter-mile handicap hurdle on the Nicky Henderson-trained Thinking Twice, and he won the two-mile Champion Novice Hurdle on Bayrouge, who was trained by that season’s champion National Hunt trainer Annemarie O’Brien, whose husband Aidan rode in the bumper that day.  

Tony Martin rode a double.  William O’Sullivan won the cross-country chase on Heavenly Citizen for his brother Eugene, this was two years after they had teamed up to win the Foxhunter at Cheltenham with Lovely Citizen.  Trevor Horgan won the two-and-a-half-mile novice chase on Force Seven for Paddy Mullins, and his son Willie had no winners.

The Punchestown Festival was a three-day meeting back then, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.  The banks closed and the Kildare kids had the days off school so that they and their parents and, importantly, their teachers could go to the races.  The Punchestown Gold Cup was the Heineken Gold Cup and it was a handicap chase, run on the Wednesday.  

The Heineken Gold Cup was won that year by Fissure Seal, who was trained by Henry de Bromhead’s dad Harry and who was ridden by Graham Bradley, and who had, six weeks earlier, won the American Express Gold Card Handicap Hurdle Final at Cheltenham, the modern day Pertemps Final.  He was one of six Irish-trained Cheltenham Festival winners that year, more than there had been in a decade, and we had cheered home every single one of them.

You could skip Punchestown on the Wednesday that year and go to your lectures, but it was important that you were back there on the Thursday (Ilac Library: More research) because Viking Flagship and Richard Dunwoody were back too.  They added the two-mile Bank of Ireland Novice Chase, the modern day Champion Novice Chase, to their 1993 Punchestown Festival haul.

Remarkably, that was Viking Flagship’s seventh chase that season, his second race in three days and his seventh race in three months.  And, if he hadn’t fallen at the final fence on his chasing bow at Nottingham less than three months earlier, it would have been his seventh win.  He ran four times in February that year, and three times in April.  And 66 more times in his career.

They must have made racehorses out of teak in those days.

Moscow Flyer ran 44 times in his career, 10 times at Punchestown and five times at the Punchestown Festival.  He won his maiden hurdle there in October 1999, and he went back there the following April, for the Festival, for the Evening Herald (back in the day when the Herald came out in the evening) Champion Novice Hurdle.  He was allowed go off at 10/1 that day, on the back of a disappointing run at Fairyhouse nine days earlier, his first defeat over hurdles, and taking on the Supreme Novices’ Hurdle winner Sausalito Bay.  But he won easily.

Moscow Flyer loved Punchestown.  He won the Morgiana Hurdle there the following November and he won the Craddockstown Novice Chase there the November after that, and he won the Swordlestown Cup, the modern-day Champion Novice Chase, there at the Festival the April after that, six weeks after he had won the Arkle at Cheltenham.

He won the Tied Cottage Chase at Punchestown in February 2003 – the race that was reversed into the Dublin Racing Festival at Leopardstown when that came into being and named the Dublin Chase – which took his Punchestown record to six from six, and he went back there to the Festival that April, where he was sent off an odds-on shot for the BMW Chase.  

The mathematicians were nervous though.  He had that strange pattern to his chasing career then, remember?  Every third run?

Before he lined up in the BMW Chase that day, Moscow Flyer’s record over fences read F111F111U111.  Continue the sequence.  The mathematicians had him down for a U and, sure enough, in front at the second last fence, he clouted the obstacle and gave his rider Barry Geraghty no chance.

Jessica Harrington’s horse went back to Punchestown a year later though, having continued his sequence over fences, taken it to F111F111U111U111U1.  The mathematicians and the market expected a 1, and that is what they got.  He won easily from Rathgar Beau. 

Moscow Flyer was 11 years old the following year when he lined up in the Champion Chase at Punchestown again.  We went down to the start because we could.  That was one of the many things that we loved about Punchestown, the relaxedness of it all, the fact that you could go wherever you wanted to go.  You could go out to the Big Double for the La Touche Cup, for example, even if you knew that you would do well to be back before the horses left the parade ring for the next.

The two-mile start was way handier.  It was right beside you, just in front of the stands, in front of the final fence.  It was always fascinating at the start, listening to the jockeys before they lined up, what they told each other, what they didn’t tell each other, all the shouts and all the protestations, and the starter’s instructions.  Stern.  Then, come on then, and whoosh!  More shouts as the tape flies.

That was the good about being at the two-mile start, the fact that you were actually at the start.  That and the last fence, that you were there when they came around again, one circuit later, down to the last, right beside the final fence, with the shouts and the cries and the sounds of hoof on wood and of body on birch.  The bad was that you couldn’t really see the finish.

We saw Moscow Flyer and his old rival Rathgar Beau running away from us that day, over the last and up the run-in away from us to the winning line, and we could hear the crowd and we could hear the tannoy, and we fully expected that Moscow Flyer would win again.  He didn’t though.  Rathgar Beau beat him by a short head. 

Sprinter Sacre won though.  It was great that he did.  It was great that he came over to Punchestown at all. 

He was nine for nine over fences when he came to Punchestown in 2013.  Five for five as a novice, the Arkle winner, the Maghull Chase winner, and four for four in open company, the Tingle Creek winner, the Champion Chase winner.  It’s not easy to win Grade 1 races at Cheltenham and at Aintree and at Punchestown in the same season, at that stage of an arduous programme like that, at that level, in such a short space of time.  It has to take its toll.  And Sprinter Sacre was not at his brilliant best at Punchestown. But he won and he returned healthy and well, and they were the important aspects of it all.

The crowd appreciated his presence too.  It was massive.  They applauded the horse as he walked around the parade ring before the race, and they applauded trainer Nicky Henderson for taking him over so that we could get a look at him in the flesh, and they applauded him through the race.  They cheered when he came back in too, Barry Geraghty on his back.  He was a 1/9 shot, you have to think that not many people would have been backing him at that price (if you have the nine, a wise man once asked, do you really need the one?)  but they still gave him the reception that he deserved.  Good horses get that at Punchestown.

Sizing John was a good horse.  He won the Future Champions Novice Hurdle and the Craddockstown Chase for Henry de Bromhead and he won the Kinloch Brae Chase for Jessica Harrington.

He didn’t go to Aintree in 2017, but he won the Irish Gold Cup at Leopardstown in February and he won the Cheltenham Gold Cup at Cheltenham in March before he went to Punchestown in April for the Punchestown Gold Cup.  Three months, three Gold Cups: no horse had ever before won all three.

And just like Sprinter Sacre hadn’t been at his best at Punchestown in 2013, Sizing John probably wasn’t at his best at Punchestown in 2017 as the rigours of the season probably told. 

It was some race too, Sizing John and Coneygree and Djakadam, the 2017 Cheltenham Gold Cup winner and the 2015 Cheltenham Gold Cup winner and the 2015 and 2016 Cheltenham Gold Cup runner-up, in a toe-to-toe-to-toe from the top of the home straight.  A half a length separated the three of them at the second last fence, and all three were in the air together at the last.  Ultimately, it was Sizing John who prevailed.  Grit and fortitude and determination to go with his pace and his class and his stamina, and he completed the triumvirate of Gold Cups.  

What a race.

Punchestown brings the curtain down perennially on the National Hunt season, and sometimes on an era and, in 2018, it brought the curtain down on two of them.

Katie Walsh and Nina Carberry walked the track together early that week, and they half-shared semi-thoughts.  If I ride a winner, you never know.  Or if I ride one.

Katie rode her winner first, Antey for Willie Mullins in the two-mile novices’ hurdle on the Friday, and promptly announced her retirement from the saddle.  That was it, we thought, the story of the week, the headlines wrote themselves.

Then the following day, Nina won the opening contest, the Dooley Insurance Cross Country Chase, on Josies Orders for Enda Bolger and JP McManus, and followed suit.

“I’m going to follow Katie and retire now,” she told RTE’s Tracy Piggott after she pulled up.  “It has been a marvellous career, it’s a bit emotional, but I think that I should end it on one of Enda’s around the banks, and for JP.” 

It was remarkable that the two glass-ceiling-shatterers, mould-breakers, should both retire at the same Punchestown Festival, within 24 hours of each other.  And the synergies between the two go way beyond that. Both from racing dynasties, Nina won the Irish Grand National on Organisedconfusion in 2011, the first female rider to win the race in 27 years.  Katie won it four years later on Thunder And Roses.  And there was that National Hunt Chase finish in 2010, Katie on Poker De Sivola, Nina on Becauseicouldntsee, neither giving an inch.  And the post-race embraces.  

Sisters in arms and sisters-in-law.

Twelve months later at Punchestown, it was Ruby’s turn.  The wave as he crossed the winning line in the 2019 Punchestown Gold Cup on Kemboy, two lengths clear of his horse’s stable companion Al Boum Photo, was subtle.  If you were looking for it though, you would have noticed it, and now, looking back, you can see it all right.  It didn’t take everyone by surprise, but it took most people by surprise.  

“You’ll need to get a new rider for Livelovelaugh in the handicap chase!” the 12-time champion told Willie Mullins in the winner’s enclosure.  It took Willie a moment or two to figure it out, and it took the rest of us a little longer, but gradually the realisation dawned that the curtain had just come down on a truly extraordinary career.

It is at the end of Punchestown too that the season’s champions are crowned: champion jockey, champion owner, champion amateur, champion conditional, champion trainer.  Willie Mullins.  It has been ever thus.

Gordon Elliott ran him close though in 2018.  The trainers’ championship thread was a thread that ran through the entire 2017/18 National Hunt season, and all the way through the 2018 Punchestown Festival, almost to the end of the week.

Gordon led by over €500,000 going into the week, and the bookmakers made him marginal favourite for the title.  And that was the year that Al Boum Photo (trained by Willie Mullins) ran out at the final fence in the Grade 1 Growise Chase on the first day of Punchestown week, which left the way clear for The Storyteller to lead home a Gordon Elliott 1-2-3 and bag a total of €89,000 in prize money, thereby probably effecting a swing of €130,000 between the two trainers.  It wasn’t to be though.  Willie Mullins won six of the seven races on the Wednesday, and dominated the rest of the week to bag another trainers’ championship, his 12^thin a row and his 13^th in total up to that point.

There will be stories again this year, that’s for sure, and there will be drama, and there will be top class horses and top class riders and top class competition.  Some week in store.  Be sure to sign out for all five days. 

© Weatherbys Punchestown Guide 2024