RACING:JUMPING FANS could have to wait some time for a return to action in this country but a strong Irish team is preparing to beat the cold snap and travel to Cheltenham this Saturday.
Michael Hourigan’s consistent campaigner Dancing Tornado is among a list of 10 Irish entries for the December Gold Cup which has been retitled the Vote AP Gold Cup as Cheltenham gets behind Tony McCoy’s bid for the BBC’s sports personality of the year award.
Dancing Tornado is facing another clash with Little Josh who beat him in last month’s Paddy Power Gold Cup at the course and could end up being McCoy’s mount in the big race.
“It’s possible Tony will ride but I don’t know what the riding arrangements are at the moment,” Limerick-based Hourigan said yesterday. “The horse has come out of his last race well and I’m happy with him. We’re managing here with the weather. We’ve no snow but frost is a problem. We’ve covered the gallop though and we were able to work yesterday.”
Another possible mount for McCoy among the JP McManus owned entries is Finger Onthe Pulse, a former Cheltenham festival winner who provided the legendary jockey with a memorable Galway Plate success during the summer.
Weather conditions were very different then to what Tom Taaffe and his team are battling in Straffan right now although the trainer has been able to keep Finger Onthe Pulse on the go since he also ran in the Paddy Power Gold Cup.
“He ran okay the last day but the ground had got a little soft for him. We’re probably coming to the end of a long year for the horse but the plan is to go to Cheltenham again at this stage.”
Taaffe described weather conditions in Co Kildare as a “nightmare” right now and doesn’t imagine there will be a return to racing action any time soon.
“There’s still a foot of snow here and we’re just trying to keep the gallop working. The problem is frost. It’s difficult but it’s the same for everyone. The difficulty now will be the gallops will get so saturated during the day and then frost will get into it during the nights.
“Around here, and I would include Punchestown in this, the snow is going to stay on the ground for quite a while yet. I would say we are looking at Saturday or Sunday at the earliest before we’re able to race again,” he said.
Dancing Tornado and Tony Martin’s classy Psycho are 10 to 1 shots in ante-post betting for the Vote AP Gold Cup while other Irish possible hopefuls include Jered, Scotsirish and Gonebeyondrecall.
Cheltenham clerk of the course Simon Claisse is “thoroughly optimistic” of racing going ahead at the weekend following the putting down of frost covers yesterday.
“On the basis of our forecast and the covers being down I’m thoroughly optimistic for the weekend ahead,” he said. “It got down to minus four overnight which has delayed the deployment of the covers – we have had to push it back from 10am to 11.30am and we’ve brought in an extra two dozen people to get the job done by the time the weather starts to go off again at about 4pm.”
The scale of the task is not one that Claisse is taking lightly, and he said: “It is a laborious job and it takes at least three or four hours to get it done. You’re talking about an area the size of 25 football pitches, 400 bits of material, each about 400sq metres and about 3,500 pegs to go into the ground.
“We’re not only doing the running lines on the chase and hurdles course but we have to do all the other bits that deliver the horses from the parade ring down to each start so there’s quite a lot to get done.”
The course successfully deployed frost covers for last-season’s New Year Day card and for Trials Day, and Claisse believes that this meeting has as good a chance of going ahead as they did.
“The beneficial thing from our point of view is that our soil temperature is still above four degrees, whereas in January when we deployed the covers before it’s only been somewhere between two and three degrees.
“Looking at the forecast for the week the worst frost is tonight (Sunday) which is at minus eight on the ground and then it’s not so bad.”
