Emotions sprint and stay with O'Sullivan out in front of so many Cheltenham minds
FOR MICHAEL: Paul Townend, aboard Kopek Des Bordes, celebrates by pointing to a Cork crest after winning the Michael O’Sullivan Supreme Novices’ Hurdle on day one of the Cheltenham Racing Festival at Prestbury Park in Cheltenham, England. Photo by Harry Murphy/Sportsfile
Cheltenham is both marathon and sprint. It is a four-day, 28-race slog and a festival that invariably bursts out of the blocks with the Supreme Novices’ Hurdle on the Tuesday. Pacing? Forget about it. Think Paul McCartney or Olivia Rodrigo opening at Glastonbury.
If it’s a gig that grabs your attention from minute one, then this one captured hearts, too. And, hey, it’s easy to say that. And, yes, it’s easy for that sort of statement to look sappy in print, but some stories still sit with you in these cynical times.
Less than four weeks have passed since Michael O’Sullivan passed away in Cork University Hospital from injuries sustained in a fall in Thurles ten days earlier, and the opener here was both named and won in his honour by Kopek Des Bordes.
This first day actually began 50 minutes earlier than usual with a tribute held in O’Sullivan’s honour in the Prestbury Park parade ring and Kopek’s owner, Charlie McCarthy, had told the departed jockey’s family that he would love to win the Supreme in his memory.
Win it he did.
Paul Townend was the man who, yet again, guided the Willie Mullins-trained five-year old home. A man of few words, it wasn’t this reserve that prompted his silence when ITV’s Oli Bell mentioned O’Sullivan as the Irishman was still sat in the saddle.
The winning jockey had spoken calmy and clearly when Bell asked him to rerun Tuesday’s opener for the viewers, but emotion threatened to take over when the conversation turned to O’Sullivan and it was all he could do but bite his lip.
“He was a big part of our team,” said Townend later. “He lived locally to me, a Cork man as well. He is in everyone’s thoughts every day. We can just count ourselves very lucky we knew him for the short time we did. Very lucky to have known such an incredible young man.”
O’Sullivan was from Lombardstown. Townend hails from Lisgoold. McCarthy is a Fermoy man. It’s a triangle that a car would cover in the time it takes to watch a soap opera but there was a lifetime’s worth of real-life, raw emotion wrapped up in this one race.
Like the rest of his colleagues in the weighing room, Townend was wearing a red and white armband with the Cork crest on his sleeve. Of all the ways to mark the loss of O’Sullivan, it’s hard to think of one that would have been more fitting.
McCarthy was himself just 12 days removed from having a cancerous kidney removed - successfully - in Cork University Hospital. His doctor, having given the all-clear, had told him that the recovery would take ten days. A close-run thing, in more ways than one.
“I’d have swum the Irish Sea to get here,” he said. Quite matter-of-factly.
It’s easy to overplay sport’s hand at times, especially when we live in times bedevilled by big picture, existential concerns that seemed fantastical only a matter of months and, in some cases, weeks ago, but it makes stories and days like this more important rather than less.
“I’m on cloud nine,” said McCarthy. “Is there a bigger cloud to be on? I just can’t get over it! Here with my sons, to win at Cheltenham and to win the Supreme Novices’ Hurdle, after everything I’ve been through, is a dream come true. And the dream is not finished yet.” Not for him, and not for others.
The Arkle is a race that has a long history of acting as breeding ground for future Champion Chase winners, but this was all about the here and the now as Jango Baie made the latest of late, late bursts to deprive Only By Night and favourite Majborough.
Think Road Runner leaving Wile. E. Coyote for dust.
For Nicky Henderson it was a return to winning ways at this festival after his yard had been laid so low by a bug at the eleventh hour in 2024. For owner Tony Barney it was a win but so much more than just that.
“It means a lot to me as I bought the horse on the day my son got killed,” Barney explained. “His name was James Barney, the horse is Jango Baie, so the same initials. And James Bowen won on him at Aintree.”
As he stood there, under cold but blue Cotswold skies, Barney couldn’t help but think that his son was looking down on him. He felt blessed. It was all too easy to be carried along with it. And to stop, eventually, and remember that we have another three days to go.
Three days, three more sprints, all manner of emotions.
