'What happened today just doesn’t happen' — O'Sullivan echoes through breathtaking day two
DEEP MEANING: Sean Flanagan hugs the late Michael O’Sullivan’s girlfriend Charlotte Giles after winning the Queen Mother Champion Chase on Marine Nationale
If Tuesday was a fitting tribute to the late Michael O’Sullivan – and it was certainly that – then what does that make day two of the 2025 festival? How do we even begin to process the first 48 hours in the Cotswolds this week?
The opening day had got underway an hour earlier than usual when the racing fraternity and members of O’Sullivan’s family gathered in and around the parade ring at this famous racecourse to remember the 24-year old who passed away last month.
If nothing else happened this week to mark his loss then they had paused and remembered.
An hour later and Kopek Des Bordes, a horse ridden and owned by a jockey and connections hailing just a stone’s throw from theLombardstown man’s homeplace, claimed a Supreme Novice’s Hurdle that he himself had won here two years ago.
As happenstances go, it was perfect, not least the fact that the race had been renamed in his honour. Emotions swirled around Prestbury Park. How could anyone have known that the overnight pause would prove to be nothing more than an interlude in all this?
Go back two years and O’Sullivan saddled back-to-back Cheltenham Festival wins on the opening day with Marine Nationale in that Supreme Novices’ Hurdle and then Jazzy Matty in the Fred Winter Juvenile Handicap Hurdle.
Here’s where it really starts to take the breath away.
On Wednesday afternoon here, Marine Nationale won the Queen Mother’s Champion Chase. Then Jazzy Matty came home first Challenge Cup Handicap Steeple Chase. Back-to-back. Again. And all in the space of just 40 minutes.
“I just said it to Alan O’Sullivan [Michael’s brother] there, what happened there today just doesn’t happen, with Marine Nationale and Jazzy winning,” said Cian Collins, trainer of Jazzy Matty. “That doesn’t happen too often.” Mervyn Gray, one of the six-year old’s owners through the Top Man Racing Syndicate, wiped a tear or two from his eyes before finding the composure to put his thoughts into words. Disbelief was his starting point. And he wasn’t alone.
“We knew coming here with the weight we had that he had a great chance. He finished [second] by a nose when giving Path d’Oroux 8lbs here in October and we knew he loves this hill.
“He had proved it before. Mikey O’Sullivan had rode him before. Marine Nationale wins as well. Mikey O’Sullivan rode him to a win in the Supreme. What a day. It’s a very special moment.”
Everyone carries different beliefs and finds comfort from grief and loss in their own way, but there has been common ground here in the certainty that one man has been looking down on this corner of England this week. You don’t need to pray to any god to share that as a truth.
Here through it all have been members of the O’Sullivan family and his girlfriend Charlotte Giles who assumed a hands-on role with Marine Nationale, helping to tack and prepare the eight-year old through the earlier half of the day.
“I have spent a good bit of time with her and the family in the last couple of weeks,” said Marine Nationale’s trainer Barry Connell, “and any little thing we can do to help anybody involved with Michael through [this]…It has been an incredibly heart-wrenching time for everybody so I dedicate the race today to Michael’s memory. I’m sure he would have been proud of us all.”
The racing world makes for a small community. Sean O’Keeffe, winning jockey on Lecky Watson in the Brown Advisory Novices’ Steeple Chase earlier in the day, spoke about how his departed friend had rated the seven-year old and knew there was a big win in him.
O’Sullivan had stayed in the same house as O’Keeffe in Cheltenham this time last year. And he had spent so much time on board Marine Nationale before Sean Flanagan got to partner him to victory here for the second time at Prestbury Park.
Flanagan can’t have avoided the whispers around the Cotswolds on Tuesday night. Imagine, people whispered, even as they were digesting the events and the emotion of that first day, if Marine Nationale could win on day two. Just imagine. It felt outlandish at the time. A pipedream. Little did we know.
Paul Townend pointed to the Cork armband on his sleeve when coming home with Kopek Des Bordes on Tuesday. Flanagan looked to the heavens as he finished with an 18-length advantage and appeared to offer some words as he arched his neck.
“I’m only the man that steered him round today,” he said. “Michael is the man who made him what he is. He will never be forgotten for that … The horse is what he is today because Michael made him. It is very emotional.”
