Horse Racing, the Cheltenham Festival: Irish Money Says Champion Hurdle Ours for the Taking

There are two years in the history of National Hunt racing that the Irish would prefer to forget: 1947 and 1989, the two seasons when the Cheltenham Festival passed without a single winner trained in Ireland.

In fact the late 1980s as a whole were a pretty miserable time. Back then, when bookies priced up the number of Irish winners at the Festival, one was usually the favourite, followed closely by zero.

One wild economic boom later, the situation could hardly be more different. The famous Celtic Tiger has romped through every level of Irish life, and few industries have felt the benefit quite like their racing.

The current ante-post prices on the Champion Hurdle are frankly embarrassing for British jumps racing. The first six in the list are trained in Ireland - with four of them due to run at Leopardstown on Sunday in the AIG Hurdle - while the home side's best hope appears to be the 2003 Champion, Rooster Booster - now an 11-year-old.

In betting terms, Ireland's half-dozen contenders taken together represent a 20-1 on chance that the prize will go across the sea for the fifth time in the last seven runnings.

"The Celtic Tiger has had a lot to do with it," Michael O'Hagan, the general manager of Irish Thoroughbred Marketing, says. "We will always export a lot of our horses, but it used to be that we had to sell the good silver to keep the average stuff at home.

"Now we can afford to hold on to the better stuff and take the trophies home when we descend on Cheltenham."

The new money in Ireland has formed a powerful alliance with the deep love of horses that persists from the days when the country's economy was almost entirely rural.

"The following is huge, especially for National Hunt racing," O'Hagan says. "You could go to a point-to-point in north Cork next Sunday and find three or four thousand people standing in the middle of a field in freezing rain.

"The excitement about National Hunt racing is at a peak because we've got so many good horses - and people who can afford to keep them at home. These are people who realise that in this business you can have a good day and a rotten day, so they're willing to stick with the programme and keep coming back for more."

One of the trainers feeling the benefit is Paul Nolan, whose Accordion Etoile is no better than 9-1 for the Champion Hurdle after his clinical success in a handicap at Cheltenham in November.

"Numerous people have rung me about a couple of the half-decent horses I have, but they're not for sale and that's that," Nolan says. "As a trainer, that obviously gives me a lot of confidence.

"A few years ago at the sales, any horse with form was swiped up straight away and taken across [the sea], but now the builders and property developers and so on are able to buy them themselves."

However, perhaps with the memories of the late 1980s still painfully fresh, nothing is being taken for granted.

"I've seen years when we've gone to Cheltenham with what looks like a really strong team of horses and had a terrible time of it," Nolan says. "With a little bit of bad luck, three of those six might not even run in the Champion. And though we seem to have a strong bunch of hurdlers at the moment, apart from Hardy Eustace they still have to go out and do it.

"My fellow is improving, but at the end of the day it was still a handicap that he won at Cheltenham and he'll have to improve to win at the Festival."

The worry now for British trainers and owners is that the Celtic Tiger may do the same thing for Ireland's chasers.

"I think it's got to happen," O'Hagan says. "There's a really strong basis for growth in Ireland and in time, that will filter through to the chasers too."

Latest odds

Harchibald Best odds 3/1

(Trained in Ireland by Noel Meade)

Back In Front 6/1

(Ireland, Edward O'Grady)

Hardy Eustace 9/1

(Ireland, Dessie Hughes)

Macs Joy 9/1

(Ireland, Jessica Harrington)

Accordion Etoile 9/1

(Ireland, Paul Nolan)

Brave Inca 10/1

(Ireland, Colm Murphy)

Rooster Booster 16/1

(Britain , Philip Hobbs)

Inglis Drever 20/1

(Britain , Howard Johnson)

Royal Shakespeare 25/1

(Britain , Steve Gollings)