Un De Sceaux destined for Queen Mother success, say connections

Colm O'Connell believes it isn't just impeccable form and a very short price that make Un De Sceaux a sure thing for this afternoon's Queen Mother Champion Chase. There's destiny involved too, he reckons.

For one thing O’Connell is 37 today: what are the odds, he asks - a lot longer than Un De Sceaux’s certainly.

As the lead figure in a colourful scarf-wearing group that has followed the horse into various winners enclosures in three countries, including Cheltenham 2015 after the Arkle, there is no greater fan of the two-mile tearaway. But it's more than that.

O’Connell’s father, Eddie, in whose colours Un De Sceaux runs, has been ill and again chosen to stay home in Cork while his horse attempts to pick up a prize widely presumed all season to be his for the taking all season.

In Un De Sceaux’s career to date, he has only been beaten when falling, an instinct to throw his heart over a fence, hoping the rest of him follows, occasionally catching him out.

Colm O’Connell reckons horse and owner are a perfect fit.

“My father Eddie is an all or nothing kind of guy, self made, built a business out of nothing: there’s a similarity there with the horse. There really is,” he says. “I would never get complacent about this, or forget how lucky we are to have such a horse, but I believe it’s destiny he’ll win.”

Un De Sceaux himself isn’t a natural candidate for the comfortable role of cool, clean hero. As befits the king of the speed division, he’s more high-strung than cuddly, fiercely resentful of being stuck behind anyone or anything, and certainly not one for the niceties.

“He’d chew your hand off and kick you to death!” O’Connell laughs in response to any idea of some polo-mint crunching cliché. “I’m very hands-off. But I love him to bits.”

For O’Connell, Un De Sceaux is just the most obvious example of Willie Mullins’s genius for talent spotting.

His father first made contact with the champion trainer about a decade ago. The family had a history in point to points but their Glanmire based transport and logistics business was going well and O’Connell Snr felt it was time to try and get a “festival horse.”

His son recalls: “Turban was the first horse Willie got for us. We had success with him beyond our wildest dreams. He took us to the Topham in Aintree and everything. So Eddie went back, said he could only afford handy money and Willie said fair enough.

“Willie came back and said he might have something suitable for our budget: that the horse had no breeding, there wasn’t a lot of him and he was a handful. But he said he had an engine if they could get him to calm down.

We bought him in September and the following February Ruby (Walsh) hopped off at Punchestown and said his hands were killing him after trying to hold the horse!

“What’s happened since is unbelievable. We’ve made plenty prizemoney and of course you use that to go again. So Willie found us Bachasson who has turned into another star. You might call the first one luck but not three times. Willie’s eye is incredible, along with Harold Kirk and Pierre Boulard in France. It is some team.”

Virginie Bascop is the team-member responsible for Un De Sceaux day-to-day, entrusted with the mixed blessing of riding a potential champion every morning while trying not to get run away with.

The horse has assumed Hurricane Fly’s old role at the of the string every morning on the basis that to try and put him behind anything could lead to a riot. The Mullins operation as a whole has O’Connell reaching for superlatives.

“Our only input is paying an invoice each month. And when you see the effort put in by so many people, including Virginie, you know it isn’t being done just because of money. There’s pure love behind it too,” he says.