TAOISEACH ENDA Kenny was having a day out at the races with his family. Though he had not backed any winners by mid-afternoon, ever the optimist, he was hoping his luck would change.
“I was looking to see if there was a horse here called Calm Down,” he laughed.
Asked if he’d seen former taoiseach Bertie Ahern, who was rumoured to be in attendance, he said he had not, but he had seen a horse called “Dedigout”.
“Maybe he had a bet on that,” the Taoiseach said.
From the outset, when the damp grass flattened beneath his helicopter as it landed at the side of the race track, it looked like businessman JP McManus might dominate the proceedings.
In the first race, his horse Get Me Out of Here, ridden by Tony McCoy, triumphed. The same jockey had a success for McManus in the third on Alderwood.
With five runners in the Irish Grand National, McManus’s emerald green and orange silks vied to dominate with the maroon and white of Michael O’Leary, who also had five runners. Between them, they had one-third of the field.
Chances were one of them would take the prize, it seemed.
The winners’ enclosure was graced for a short time in advance of the big race by finalists in the Carton House Most Stylish Lady competition.
Despite the chill wind, there were plenty of bare, bronzed legs and hats perched at angles that a blown kiss could have unseated.
But winner of the ladies style competition Michelle O’Connor, from Navan, looked cosier than most in a navy jumpsuit topped with a cream rabbit-fur stole and hat, both discovered in her great-aunt’s suitcase.
Her Downton Abbey-style outfit cost all of €100 and won her an €8,000 prize. Asked if she was feeling the cold, she confessed to wearing long johns and a T-shirt underneath.
Former Miss World Rosanna Davison, in a cream rose-petalled dress, with TV presenter Brendan Courtney, in a tweedy three-piece suit and bright yellow socks, had judged the competition.
“I love a pair of trousers on a day like today,” Mr Courtney said, referring to the winner’s garb, rather than his own.
Other familiar faces included Dragons’ Den presenter Gavin Duffy and his wife Orla, and model Pippa O’Connor with her husband Brian Ormond.
Minister of State at the Department of Agriculture Shane McEntee was also in attendance, as was Tipperary South TD Tom Hayes.
By the time the big race was due, the rain, which had drenched horse and human alike, had given way to intermittent sunshine.
Many punters chose to back McManus’s Aigle D’Or, including 11-year-old Johnny Woods, from Julianstown , who thought jockey Barry Geraghty, a fellow Meath man, had a good chance.
But the bookies were left rubbing their hands together as 33-to-1 shot Lion na Bearnai took the prize.
In the winners’ enclosure, as the rain began again, Mr Kenny presented the prize to jockey Andrew Thornton, who was surrounded by members of the Lock Syndicate, a local group.
Afterwards, syndicate spokesman Tom Gilsenan said the eight-member group bought the horse in 2005 after an approach from trainer Thomas Gibney.
It cost the group €9,000 at the time, and yesterday won them more than €140,000, not to mention the “small bets” on the side.
“We’ve been telling people for the last few weeks he’s savage value at 40-to-1 or 50-to-1 – go put your tenner on him,” Mr Gilsenan said.
The group was retiring to Teach Fada, a pub in Kilskyre outside Kells, Co Meath, where five of them live, to celebrate.
“You couldn’t get a better advertisement for the small trainer and the small owner,” Mr Gilsenan said. “We’ll go and get another one now.”
Lion-hearted long shot makes it a fairytale success: page 21
