Category: RACING
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Highs, lows and just enough of a pull on the heart strings
Noel Meade? Gordon? Or push the boat out and go for Willie? Yes lads and lassies, as only it can, the Cheltenham Festival has planted the seed of wanting to have a horse trained in Ireland again. The heart and soul has always said if the opportunity arose, it would be to Noel in Castletown.…
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Doing the right thing won’t make you popular
When my late father was into his eighth decade, he got to venture into an area of horse racing (which he adored all his life) which none of us would have ever thought possible. Particularly yours truly. That is to say, through a very special friendship out of what was once a business relationship with…
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JP catches racing clan cold with Cobden call
There is a sneery element of Irish society and, it pains me to say, the media, whose greatest function in life seems to be bandwagoning on people’s misfortune. Or at the very least finding fault with every scintilla of what they do in life. Now read on… There’s one particular hack at national level –…
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A Constitutional Conundrum
The prolific racing blogger Stephen Power (@racingblogger) posted a very simple question in the immediate aftermath of the Fighting Fifth Hurdle at Newcastle: “If you owned Constitution Hill, what would you do now?”? First, the back story. From the first time Michael Buckley’s animal was seen on a course, he was seen as one of…
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Blow for Mullins as former champ sidelined
As far as the order of things go in the National Hunt racing season, things are still only in second gear at most. It’s a well known fact that, for example, Willie Mullins doesn’t go up through the gears with the intensity of his operation until early November when there tends to be sufficient rain…
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Danny Daly would be having a little laugh at my expense
For reasons which I’ve never quite been able to figure out, in certain circumstances, inclination has always been to veer towards the company of older folk rather than that of my own generation. If absolutely pressed for an explanation, it would be ventured that it was because somebody I once considered myself close to did…
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You can’t please everybody so have to please yourself
There’s an old saying which deems that ‘One man’s trash is another man’s treasure’ and it’s one which I believe in and swear by to the nth degree. For example, despite being let down more often than a bouncy castle in high summer and having my heart broken with similar regularity to a chef cracking…
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Thurles disaster may be averted after “Positive Meeting”
The potentially disastrous closure of Thurles Racecourse has been averted until the end of next March at least following what was described as a “Positive Meeting” between the property’s owners, the Molony family, and the HRI. Earlier this month, Irish racing – and the National Hunt sector thereof in particular – was sent into a…
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Never doubt that they are watching…
I always feel a bit strange for a day or two after the men’s All Ireland SFC Final. Another chapter of the sporting year done. Summer gone before the farmers have even begun cutting winter wheat. “The hay is saved and Cork are bet the crowd do wildly roar”. Or at least that’s the way…
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Selections for Killarney – July 18th 2025
1.25: CINNAMON COCO (JJ SLEVIN/JOSEPH O’BRIEN) 1.55: AMBOYNA (DARRAGH O’KEEFFE/J. E. & T. KIELY) 2.30: COOL CHEERY (PAUL TOWNEND/WILLIE MULLINS) 3.05: DUTCH SCHULTZ – EW – (CONOR STONE-WALSH/GAVIN CROMWELL) 3.40: NURBERGRING (JJ SLEVIN/JOSEPH O’BRIEN) 4.15: BIG ISLAND – EW – (DANNY MULLINS/BILLY LANNIGAN) 4.50: DUE COURSE – EW – (EOIN STAPLES (7)/GAVIN CROMWELL) 5.25: FRAHER…