Back when magazines had money to pay freelance writers to produce unique content, I used to write travel articles, complete with a five-star rating system and practical tips for tourists, about horse racing in foreign places. Over the span of two years, I traveled the globe to report back on a dozen destinations, including the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe at Longchamp, the Hong Kong International Cup at Sha Tin and the White Turf races on the frozen lake at St. Moritz. Each assignment was a thrill to experience. I’m sorry the gig ended.
“You can’t go home again,” wrote the American novelist Thomas Wolfe. But going home was precisely what gave me the opportunity to pick up the series for one more go-around – namely, theHorseRaceInsider.com column that follows. My wife Maureen, nee O’Brien, and our daughters Annie and Biz and I went to Ireland for Thanksgiving Day. Maureen’s grandparents hailed from County Clare in the South of Ireland, which is a day’s drive from Dublin. This great city was our home for the weekend. “Over the Fences and Through the Fog,” is homage to her heritage.
Vic Zast’s Rating of Horse Racing in Ireland: Four stars out of five
(DUBLIN, IRELAND – November 30, 2009) Night racing on Polytrack at Dundalk is the experiential equivalent of a weeknight at Turfway Park. This is not to say that it’s totally without fun. Regardless, who in his right mind abandons a few cozy days in sweet home Chicago for an even colder, drearier place where the dollar’s worth only 60 percent of the local currency? I’d say a dreamer.
My plan was to take in two days of steeplechase racing in Ireland over Thanksgiving weekend. A horseplayer could have gotten 99-1 by betting that before the trip was over I would have not seen a horse jump a fence. But that’s what came out of it. My report is about how to witness two days of horse racing at two different Irish racecourses during National Hunt season without experiencing the effect that you came for. It was worth it, believe me, nonetheless.
Let’s begin with the reason why things turned out as they did – ah, the weather. Dundalk, near the border of Northern Ireland by the Irish Sea, is a sad substitute for an afternoon of the jumpers at Naas, county seat of County Kildare, the center of scenic thoroughbred country. But Dundalk, of all places, became the alternative when the fortnight of rain that flooded the south and the west swamped the course.
Steeplechasing becomes the passion of Irish racing as winter rolls in. Horses representing the hopes of trainers and owners with expectations of racing for Ireland against Britain at Cheltenham in March begin their preparations as early as November and, in fact, the American Thanksgiving weekend coincided with the debut of several. On the other hand, the bog-like conditions delayed some of the unveilings. Captain Cee Bee, a winner of the 2008 Supreme Novices Hurdle at Cheltenham, for one, was a casualty of the dysfunctional Naas turf. The going wasn’t heavy; it was treacherous.
“The uncertainty of the weather is one of the reasons we have an all-weather course,” explained Daithi (pronounced Dah-hee) Harvey, the youngest son of five children born to farmers that lived down the road from Ballymacoll where Mary Baker bred the indomitable Arkle. Harvey, an engaging young man with respect for restraint, works for Irish Thoroughbred Marketing, a firm that was established less than a decade ago to expand the market for Irish-bred horses.
“You have to have one if you’re to be a world-class racing country, now don’t you?” he added, explaining how the re-built racecourse emerged from what appeared to be certain extinction only recently. I knew, of course, that Muhannak had won at Dundalk before winning the first Breeders’ Cup Marathon in 2008. Harvey reminded me that Man of Iron had raced twice on the same surface before triumphing on the Pro-Ride of Santa Anita this November. “It’s a lovely surface to ride on; they just glide over it, and they go fast, too,” Harvey noted, having ridden runners in training at Dundalk.
Well, in any case, there was a 2-year-old racing that evening that caught my eye. Although Harvey was lukewarm to its prospects in Europe, to me the bay youngster looked the part of a prospect for graded stakes success on this side of the pond. Address Unknown was a British-bred colt, no less, from a mare by the USA-bred Sadler’s Wells. Harvey bet him on the basis that he was owned by Juddmonte, trained by Dermot Weld, ridden by Pat Smullen, and had finished 39 lengths behind the winner in his maiden try at Leopardstown – an effort the clever lad described as “too bad to be true.”
Address Unknown raced mid-pack for most of the maiden mile, content to experience what little kickback the porridge-looking track created. There was only one turn to negotiate. Dundalk features a ten furlong oval, left-handed in the style of its American counterparts. The stretch is never-ending and Address Unknown, a long striding closer, used its length to advantage. The victory brought Smullen back to within six wins of Johnny Murtagh who, with one day of flat racing left on the calendar, was leading in the race for the jockey title.
During the course of the evening, Harvey generously offered information that I wouldn’t have known otherwise. For example, he mentioned that several years ago, Irish Thoroughbred Marketing had the idea to produce a study which could prove that Irish-bred turf horses would improve on the synthetic tracks of North America, if given the chance. The group abandoned its study halfway through, finding the results too conclusive to proceed. The success Europeans were having on man-made tracks resulted from quality not circumstance, he implied. Now if that’s not incentive for a man who has money to burn, I’m amazed.
After a long drive through rush hour traffic, Harvey and I, re-fueled with a hearty meal of soup, steak and roasted “pudadoes,” but, regradless, managed only five races. All told; there were seven on the mid-week card, followed by nine greyhound races that began at the un-Godly starting time of 9:45 pm. To my amazement, Harvey, in this brief span, identified three winners by merely scanning a race card. Although it’s true that the race card gave pertinent information such as connections, breeding, last five placings and one-line descriptions of the last three races each horse had run, it didn’t have nearly the information of a Racing Form.
Knowledge of horse racing seems to be a birthright of the pastoral Irish. Dick Downey, a Kentuckian who writes the popular pre-Kentucky Derby Web site thedowneyprofile.com, contends that horse racing is at its most popular where people have closeness to horses. If this is indeed the truth, Ireland, as a horse owning country, goes unrivalled. It would drive all my horseplayer friends mad to imagine that large sums are wagered routinely because one of the runners was “produced by a good yard,” but that’s how the punters do it there.
Statistically, 47 percent of the Irish population attends racing. The racing public is unusually young. Nearly 40 percent of the crowds are people between the ages of 25 and 34. Nearly 40 percent of racegoers are women. As for psychographics, two of three racegoers polled contend that “gathering to socialize with friends” is the main reason they follow the sport. To wit, a manifestation of the legendary craic was on full display at Fairyhouse Racecourse, ten miles north of Dublin, on Saturday.
Laughter, joke telling, singing and plenty of food and drink to rival a wake earmarked the Bobbyjo restaurant, specifically. A comfort with abandon lends the sport a sense of festivity not commonly found in North America, where seriousness abounds and a bet takes on life-and-death consequences. In Ireland, it’s likely that the winnings of a lucky wager will turn into a round of Jameson’s. Bottoms up, Irish horse racing is enjoyable.
By the way, Bobbyjo was a locally-owned hurdler that won the Irish Grand National in 1999 before meeting an untimely death three years later. It is of some note that on Saturday, with all those in attendance at Fairyhouse glued firmly to the telly, another local Grand National hero, named Niche Market, finished third to the 2008 Cheltenham Gold Cup champion Denham in the Hennessey Gold Cup at Newbury. Perhaps, the organizers of Fairyhouse will name a room for him now. In any case, billed as the first day of the track’s Winter Festival, Saturday’s racing turned conspicuously noteworthy for another circumstance.
With temperatures near freezing, fog shrouded the premises to such a degree that one couldn’t see a horse jump. The only part of each race was the very last part of the homestretch. Two announcers, one driving alongside the field in a car and the other in the stands, did their best to report on the action. “How does the race caller see the horses to announce their position?” I asked a local. “Well, that’s it, isn’t it?” he answered with a grin. What the heck had he meant by that?
It was a shame that the fog covered up the action, too, because Fairyhouse reportedly has fine sight lines. The property features two courses laid out roughly as a box within a box. The finish lines are situated in the lower left hand corner of the box and the horses run clockwise. Patrons choose from two grandstands. Neither rises very high, but both are sloped sharply to assist visibility, provided there is some. Regardless of weather, when the horses traverse the outer course, they seem so close you can touch them.
The least engaging part of Fairyhouse is the entrance. A small structure with a will call window sits just to the right of a half-dozen eight-foot high turnstiles. One gets the impression that the management would rather keep you out than let you in. But this is not at all the case. Once past the gates, you come upon the presentation ring. It is a sterile pit, grassless and barren of all but a winner's stand. Beyond that, there is plenty to make you feel welcome.
The Irish themselves are so friendly; you can’t get enough of them. When I had a flutter on a horse based on the way he looked, a man with a keener eye than mine told me, “He couldn’t win a horse look-alike contest in a room full of badgers.” By itself, that remark won me over. “I myself couldn’t see a horse jump a fence in the country of steeplechasers.”
For Vic Zast’s Tourist Tips on Ireland, please keep reading. Follow Viz Zast on Twitter.com and Facebook.com.
Things to do and see in Dublin
Wm.Thackeray Slept Here. Four gracious spaces – The Lord Mayor’s Lounge, where High Tea is served; the Horseshoe Bar, a cozy gastro-pub; Bar No. 27, popular with Dubliners for cocktails, and The Saddle Room for fine dining – earmark The Shelbourne, a Renaissance resort property opposite St. Stephen’s Green, as the place for pillow talk. The congenial Denis T.C. O’Brien, the president of an international concierge association, beckons to your every whim.
The Shelbourne, 27 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2
Tel. 355 (0) 1 663 4500
http://www.TheShelbourne.ie
Smoke Gets in Your Pies. The vapors from the Merrion’s open peat fireplaces permeate its public spaces with cloying intensity, making a stay at this fabled Georgian hotel inadvisable. Nevertheless, the hotel’s stone-vaulted Cellar Restaurant and Bar, entered from 24 Upper Merrion Street, enables one to dine deliciously in the impeccably-restored home of the first Duke of Wellington, Sir Arthur Wellesley, who defeated Napoleon at Waterloo. The more acclaimed Restaurant Patrick Guilbaud is less architecturally adventurous, but provides enchanting views of the gardens.
The Merrion Hotel, 21 Merrion Street, Dublin 2
Tel. 353 (01) 603 0630
http://www.merrionhotel.com
High Spirits. For Thoroughbred lovers, there’s no tastier souvenir than a bottle of The Tyrconnell Irish Whiskey in a collector’s tin cylinder ($100). Available at the Celtic Whiskey Shop in four flavors, each aged in a different cask, the whiskey was rated Ireland’s number one spirit in 2008. Undoubtedly, the horse-themed packaging is award-worthy, too – so pretty, you’ll think twice about cracking the cap and consuming the contents. Available also at Dublin Airport Duty-Free for $20 less ans selected stoes in New Orleans.
Celtic Whiskey Shop, 27-28 Dawson Street, Dublin 2
Tel. 353 (01) 675 9744
http://www.celticwhiskeyshop.com
Book it, Dan-O. A stroll through Trinity College campus invokes the ghosts of authors and poets like William Butler Yeats, Oscar Wilde and Bram Stoker. Even in the age of the Internet, the Book of Kells exhibit will engender humbling respect for the impact of books on civilizations. The Long Room, the last stop on the tour, features thousands of other volumes and a display of the country’s oldest harp.
Trinity College Library, College Green, Dublin 2
Tel. 353 (01) 896 1000
http://www.tcd.ie
Be a Big Cheese. Temps hover near 48 degrees in Sheridans Cheesemongers enabling the products to remain fresh while displayed. The staff contends that great service explains why this unique inconspicuous shop fares well, but it’s the vast selection of Irish, English and French cheeses that’s really the reason. A tiny room in the back offers a few meats, breads and soup.
Sheridan Cheesemongers, 11 South Anne Street, Dublin 2
Tel. 355 (01) 679 3143
http://www.dublinshop@sherdiancheesemongers.com
