Nostalgia may indeed be a seductive liar but in advance of Sunday’s Bar One Hatton’s Grace Hurdle there is nothing sentimental in pointing out how all but impossible it is to imagine Fairyhouse’s ‘Winter Festival’ highlight ever again producing the sort of feelgood stories it used to.
The juggernaut that Irish National Hunt racing has become doesn’t allow much room for the popular underdog anymore, having advanced to an unimaginable extent from when the Hatton’s Grace was first run 30 years ago as part of a new top-flight programme.
In terms of concentrating the best and most valuable races into a single easy-to-pitch product it was a prototype of racing’s reflex marketing ploy towards tagging anything that moves with its favourite ‘f’ word – festival.
But it has long since become clear how advancement isn’t always the same thing as improvement when it comes to generating popular storylines that tally with jump racing’s idea of itself as a sport for the ‘little guy’.
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It might be argued that even back in 1994 Danoli was an exception to prove the rule about how rare it is for such little guys to emerge on top in elite competition.
The very first Hatton’s Grace winner already felt like a throwback in terms of wider public engagement. How the late Co Carlow farmer-turned-trainer Tom Foley moulded the rare talent given to him by owners Dan and Olive O’Neill really did make Danoli something of a household name.
Except that shortly afterwards came a tale that was, if anything, even more unlikely featuring as improbable a giantkilling act as the sport has ever seen.
It’s 25 years since one of the great champions, Istabraq, started 1/7 favourite to win a third successive Hatton’s Grace, only to come up short against the remarkable Limestone Lad in an archetypal David v Goliath scenario.
Whereas the classically-bred Istabraq carried JP McManus’s colours, and was trained in Ballydoyle by Aidan O’Brien, Limestone Lad was the product of a family farm in Co Kilkenny, cantering daily around fields full of cattle and sheep.
James Bowe bred the horse and officially trained him alongside his son Michael. After failing the vet at the sales ring, an emerging talent got moulded into a superbly consistent top-class stayer who still has only half a dozen rated higher than him over hurdles by the Timeform organisation.
Limestone Lad went on to land the Hatton’s Grace twice more in a career that saw him run 65 times in all, winning 35 of them. When he died last year at a venerable 32-years-of-age, his popular impact was remarked upon almost as much as how he was a one-off talent.
Except he wasn’t. Having pulled off one Hatton’s Grace hat-trick, the Bowes came up with another through Solerina between 2003-05. Bred by Michael Bowe and owned by his brother, John, the mare began her career with Tom Foley before becoming a champion in her own right.
The odds about a small family operation pulling off such dominance of a major Grade One prize were massive even then. Now it is nigh on impossible to imagine even a fraction of such a romantic scenario occurring ever again. Modern jump racing has become too hard-nosed for that.
Even were a freakish natural talent to slip through the cracks at a sales ring, any subsequent glimpse of out-of-the-ordinary ability would quickly have owners and agents offering the sort of money that most small players couldn’t afford to ignore.
The point-to-point fields, particularly, are far removed from quaint amateurish stereotypes of hardy farmers trying to make a few quid on the side by pulling potential champions out of rusty sheds to parade before unwary buyers.
Now, the industry’s radar can pick up emerging youngsters from Pau to Portarlington, have them drilled to the max before pitching up in a point-to-point before selling them on to the elite cadre of owners and trainers able to afford whatever they want when they want it.
Such a concentration of excellence might be some inevitable evolution but looking at the paltry-sized field for this latest Hatton’s Grace it’s hard not to wonder what’s been lost in the process.
National Hunt racing used to pride itself as a down-to-earth opposite of the supposedly more elitist flat game. It’s a conceit that can be binned at this point. There is as much exclusivity to the Cheltenham winners’ enclosure as there is in Royal Ascot’s.
That’s largely irrelevant to punters mostly oblivious to what silks are carried by their fancy or who trains it.
But in a sporting world capable of throwing up as improbable an outcome as Leicester City winning the Premier League, or the butterball boxer Andy Ruiz catching Anthony Joshua cold, it’s a bittersweet sort of progress when the odds about jump racing providing similarly unlikely success stories in future look to be lengthening all the time.
Something for the Weekend
The pecking order for Britain’s top staying novice chasers could be clearer after today’s Grade Two in Newbury. It’s a deep contest although Johnnywho (1.55) impressed on his debut over fences at Carlisle last month and should progress.
Tomorrow’s Coral Gold Cup, still known to some as the Hennessy, has a worrying small field that includes a trio of Irish hopes. One of them, Senior Chief, impressed at Cheltenham last time. Third to him then was Broadway Boy (3.00) who should step up for the run and a return to softer ground conditions.
