Everyone was focused on racing, especially the Taoiseach, who wouldn't talk about anything else, writes ALISON HEALYat Fairyhouse
IT WAS a day for the common man at Fairyhouse yesterday as the winners’ enclosure was invaded by what seemed like half the population of Ballinhassig, Co Cork. They had whooped and hollered and jumped up and down as their horse Bluesea Cracker stormed home in the Powers Whiskey Irish Grand National.
“There was drink spilled in the excitement,” confessed Miriam Horgan, wife of one of the six syndicate members. Her daughter Katie (10) was running around in circles with two mobile phones in her hand. “I had to tell her to stop bawling crying,” her mother said.
“It’s just amazing. We didn’t expect this at all. We were just hoping to come in the first 10.”
Katie wasn’t the only one in tears at the win. A woman’s lip started to wobble as Bluesea Cracker came into the winners’ enclosure. “Stop crying, you’re on the telly,” the man said beside her.
The syndicate is a mixture of farmers and builders, explained jubilant member Brian Holland. So the €250,000 prize money will be a welcome windfall in recessionary time. “Yes, we’re over the moon,” he said. “We all had money on her and I’d say everyone in Ballinhassig had money on her.” The syndicate was staying in the Residence hotel in Ashbourne and vowed to remain in its bar until at least 6am.
The victory was described as “a great story” by Taoiseach Brian Cowen, who made the presentation. It was great to see a small syndicate buying a horse for €2,500 and winning such a race, he said. Cowen was in jovial form, despite an earlier setback when the Oireachtas horse Donnas Palm lost out in the Ladbrokes Hurdle to Mourad, a horse owned by former secretary general of the Department of the Taoiseach Paddy Teahon.
Other members of the Oireachtas syndicate, Noel Davern and GV Wright, were there to watch Donnas Palm come second, but Maurice Manning seldom braved the race track, Davern said.
“He gets amazed when he gets those cheques occasionally.”
The Taoiseach backed the winner in the second race, but astutely didn’t back Donnas Palm. “No, I didn’t fancy him. We were talking to the trainer beforehand and he had come to the racecourse with more confidence in the past so we took that as code for ‘don’t plunge too heavy’.” Mr Cowen was happy to talk to reporters but said he would only talk about the races. “I’m on a day off, you don’t mind?” he said.
Asked if he was involved in any other racehorses he quipped, “None that you need know about at the moment.”
So he was keeping his cards close to his chest and his hands deep in his pockets?
“Absolutely, it’s the only way you can survive in this business,” he said, chuckling. He wouldn’t have been chuckling if he’d heard what a racegoer said as he left. “You didn’t ask him why he bankrupted the country,” he berated the reporters. “You should have asked him.”
Lucy Foster from Enfield did not bankrupt herself when she “borrowed, begged and shared” to assemble her all-black ensemble. It was worth it when she won the Most Stylish Lady Competition, which came with a €10,000 package for Carton House and €1,000 prize money from Powers Whiskey. Lucy is daughter of the exotically-named trainer Sneezy Foster and girlfriend to trainer Fozzy Stack so she was “dragged along every weekend” to the races, she said.
Celebrities were thin on the ground yesterday and the hum of helicopters was absent. Some 13,127 filed through the turnstiles, nearly 2,000 fewer than last year’s meeting.
But Michael O’Leary was happy to attend. The Ryanair boss sponsored a race to the tune of €50,000 and his horses came first and third. Asked if he had named a horse “Hangar 6” yet, he said “they won’t give me the hangar and they won’t give me the name”.
A clever woman in Enniscorthy registered the Hangar 6 name four days before he tried to. “If she doesn’t use it in the next two months, I get it back,” he said. “And if Aer Lingus don’t use the hangar Brian Cowen promised me I can have that too.”