Mugs Game: Up top for 'thinkin but down to the betting shop floor for my torn-up dockets
TOP OF THE WORLD: Inothewayurthinkin, with Mark Walsh up, pass the Grandstand on their way to winning the Boodles Cheltenham Gold Cup Steeple Chase on day four of the Cheltenham Racing Festival at Prestbury Park in Cheltenham, England. Pic: David Fitzgerald/Sportsfile
Day Four and there’s €75.20 to play with, a rather better state of affairs than might have been envisaged at teatime on Wednesday. After three days entombed at home it’s time to get out into the light and fresh air and to re-engage with humanity.
More importantly for the purposes of this column it’s time to visit a betting shop so as to be able to reference, for merely the zillionth time, the Pogues’ line about the torn-up ticket stubs of a hundred thousand mugs. What’s more, the day is clear and the sky is bright. Will I be able to find a nag who’ll come up on the left like a streak of light?
Not in the opener I won’t. I have East India Dock as part of a short-price trixie with Dinoblue and Galopin Des Champs – a trixie rather than a treble in view of the attrition rate this week for hot favourites. He fights out an exciting finish with Lulamba and is struggling when Poniros comes up like a streak of light to chin the pair of them. At 100/1. On his hurdling debut.
The property of Tony Bloom, the visionary owner of Brighton and Hove Albion FC, the winner is one of 11 WP Mullins contenders in the race. From the trainer’s point of view it’s the equivalent of seeing his strikers and attacking midfielders unable to hit the target only for one of the full-backs to save the day with a screamer from 40 yards.
Poniros, Willie reveals, had “shown nothing much at home”, the upshot being that he was simply hoping for a decent run from him. So if Willie didn’t see him coming, what chance had we? This may or may not serve as a small consolation to the week’s legions of embattled punters.
Mullins wins the second race with Kargese; I’m on Absurde, who finishes third, solely for the better odds. He wins the third with Dinoblue, which at least means part of my trixie is still breathing. He wins the fourth with Jasmin De Vaux. We’re getting into Frankie Dettori territory here, non-financially speaking, and judging by the scarcity of torn-up ticket stubs (two) on the nice new carpet in the betting shop it’s safe to infer that some punters are profiting.
Time for the Gold Cup. Time for Galopin Des Champs to join the greats by making it a hat trick. Before we go any further it’s no harm to point out that in yesterday’s column I was all about Gavin Cromwell. Can you guess what’s coming?
Galopin Des Champs doesn’t end up joining the greats. But thankfully he doesn’t fall and isn’t brought down or anything. He runs as well as he’s able to on the day and finds his better in Inothewayurthinkin.
There’s a lot of credit to be doled out. To Gavin Cromwell (and no, needless to say I didn’t heed my own advice). To Mark Walsh. To Noreen McManus, the owner-breeder. To young Jake Cromwell, the trainer’s Mini Me, who led the winner in with considerable aplomb. Above all to whoever named the new champion and extracted maximum value from the permitted 18 letters.
In the Foxhunters I’m on Rocky’s Howya on foot of positive vibes from Dungarvan. He has every chance coming down the hill but fades. Wonderwall wins at 28/1, unloved by all bar Oasis fans. Well done to everyone who had €1,000 on. Hey presto, you now have a quarter of the price of a ticket for one of the Croke Park gigs.
For the festival finale I have East India Express (the mode of transport to East India Dock, doubtless) as the last leg of a Lucky 15 that heretofore has yielded precisely zilch. I got on at 13/2 on seeing he’d come in for heavy support this morning and he goes off at 4/1. Someone knows something the rest of us don’t.
Or rather someone doesn’t know something the rest of us don’t because East India Express, prominent from flagfall, finds nothing in the straight and ends up out of the frame. Follow the money, as Deep Throat advised Woodward and Bernstein? Maybe not all the time.
And there you have it. Awful day Tuesday, decent day Wednesday, good day Thursday, awful day Friday. Instead of an early start to the St Patrick’s Day celebrations it will, sadly but unavoidably, be an early night. Unothewayimthinkin.
• Kitty at festival’s end: €25.20
