British stables beware: Ireland’s green tide is ready to roll into Cheltenham

The first four Grade One favourites at Cheltenham next month are stabled in British yards. So are three of the top six names in the Gold Cup betting. From a safe distance on the British side of the water, it is possible to imagine a festival when, for the first time in a decade, the home team heads to the west country with a spring in its step.

But make no mistake, the green tide is coming. Across the length and breadth of the country, from the biggest yards with dozens of festival runners to 10-horse operations with a single stable star, there has been the unmistakeable sense of a confident, well-drilled army mobilising for action at pre-festival media events in Ireland this week. Ireland’s rugby team took a beating in Paris last week and the footballers are struggling to reach even a 48-team World Cup, but its horses, trainers and jockeys are not about to surrender their dominance in National Hunt racing.

The re-emergence of Gordon Elliott as a serious rival for Willie Mullins in the Irish title race feels particularly ominous from a British perspective. Ireland came away from last year’s festival with 20 winners, its second-biggest return after the extraordinary 23-winner spree in 2021, despite Elliott drawing a blank with his first 51 runners at the meeting before Wodhooh, the 52nd and last, took the final race on Friday.

It was a frustrating week that culminated in tears of joy and relief as Elliott welcomed her back to the winner’s enclosure, and one that he is in no mood to repeat.

“In racing, soccer, rugby, it’s the same, you’ve got to keep your head going,” Elliott said this week. “But as hard as it was for me, for all my staff who were putting in all the hours, it was harder for them. The horses didn’t run badly, we just didn’t get the bounce of the ball.

“When you look at this season, everything is bouncing right for us. That’s sport. You just put those days behind you but that’s what makes it better when you win.”

The headliners from Elliott’s stable next month will include Brighterdaysahead, the second-favourite for the Champion Hurdle, and Teahupoo, the market leader for the Stayers’ Hurdle, alongside the unbeaten novice chaser, Romeo Coolio, a likely runner in the two-mile Arkle Trophy but with an option to switch to the three-mile Brown Advisory Novice Chase instead.

Brighterdaysahead was a disappointing 5-2 shot in last year’s Champion Hurdle but Elliott remains hopeful that she will be able to translate her exceptional form around Leopardstown – including a win in the Irish Champion Hurdle earlier this month – to Cheltenham.

“I think last year she wasn’t right,” Elliott says. “After Punchestown [in April] we discovered something and we rectified it. She was beaten after a hurdle last year. We might do something different this year. We might stable her outside Cheltenham and just try and do something different.

Gordon Elliott supervises work at his stables this week. Photograph: Niall Carson/PA

“You’re always thinking of something different. She’s been to Cheltenham twice and hasn’t won and last year was very bad, but if you don’t try and tweak and change things then you shouldn’t be training horses. That’s my job and I’m trying to do something different every day.”

Elliott is currently around €500,000 clear of Willie Mullins in the Irish trainers’ championship, and feels that his 50-strong team for this year’s festival is his deepest for a decade. Mullins, though, seems sure to outdo him for numbers, at least, with a squad of around 70 runners horses expected to travel to the meeting.

Typically for Mullins, there are late decisions to be made on the running plans for several of his stable stars, including whether the impressive Irish Gold Cup winner, Fact To File, will be supplemented for the Gold Cup or attempt a repeat success in the Ryanair Chase.

Mullins suggested here on Wednesday that his team could be a little behind in terms of its preparation this year, not least due to the effects of the wettest winter here for many years.

“I didn’t think things would be as quiet [in the first part of the season],” Mullins said, “but we had a very wet time from November up to right after Christmas. We were waiting for a little less weather but it never really happened.

“There was no bug or anything l like that. They were all eating well and they all seemed to be fine. But sometimes at that time of the year, we are a bit slow and then in the spring, things come right.”

Mullins and Elliott lead the way for Ireland in terms of numbers, ably supported by trainers including Henry de Bromhead, who has not drawn a blank at the festival since 2016 and has a 12-point profit to level stakes over the last decade.

But there are much smaller operations too that add further depth and colour to the country’s festival challenge. Jimmy Mangan, who has not saddled a winner in Britain since Monty’s Pass in the 2003 Grand National, will send the 8-1 chance Spillane’s Tower to the Gold Cup, while Declan Queally, who both trains and rides the Grade One-winning I’ll Sort That, will run his stable star in either the Turners Novice Hurdle or the Albert Bartlett.

Trainer Willie Mullins pictured at his stable’s media day this week. Photograph: Morgan Treacy/Inpho/Shutterstock

And there will be two runners too from Barry Connell’s bespoke stable in County Kildare, including Marine Nationale, the defending champion in the Queen Mother Champion Chase.

Connell is a former hedge-fund manager who learned to ride in his late 30s, took out of an amateur jockey’s licence in his 40s and then turned his attention to training having observed trainers including Elliott at close hand during several decades as an owner.

His operation is a seamless combination of tradition and modern ideas, in a built-from-scratch stable where the handful of “store” horses that he buys each year are given all the time they need to mature and thrive, and everything from airflow to the disposal of manure is meticulously planned.

And Connell’s record at the festival speaks for itself: five runners, two wins, one second, one fourth and just one runner out of the frame.

Marine Nationale is currently the second-favourite for the Champion Chase behind Mullins’s Majborough, who beat him at the Dubin Racing Festival last time out, but Connell is confident that he can turn the tables next month.

“He has been to Cheltenham twice, won there twice and not been off the bridle twice,” Connell says. “When he walks around the pre-parade ring [there] it’s like he’s walking around the courtyard here at home. Having the right temperament is a huge thing, especially for those championship races.

“I think we’ll see a different horse again in March. That’s not just my opinion, it’s backed up by the form book when you look at what he does when he goes there every year.”

Will Team Ireland reach the giddy heights of 2021 this year? Probably not. But a repeat of last year’s 20-8 final score is an entirely realistic ambition for National Hunt’s dominant force and punters on both sides of the Irish Sea will need to ride the green wave to stand any chance of finishing the festival in profit.