By any measure, we're facing into an incredible sporting weekend. Ireland travel to Paris to take on the French in the Six Nations curtain-raiser. There are some mouthwatering fixtures in the Allianz National Leagues, including Dublin's trip to Omagh and Kerry taking on Mayo in Castlebar. And at the centre of it all, the best jump horses will gather at Leopardstown for the first annual Dublin Racing Festival on Saturday and Sunday.
On such a bumper sporting weekend, perhaps it's worth opening that great debate one more time: what really is Ireland's national sport? Because whether we're judging results or the broader culture around the sport, racing surely deserves its place at or near the top of the pecking order.
Allow us to make the case that horse racing deserves a bigger place in the Irish sporting conversation.
1. We’re so bloody good at it
We've become a results-obsessed country in recent years, so maybe it's time we started truly venerating a sport where we are legitimate world beaters.
Our football team surely doesn't deliver the results. Ireland has reached three World Cups in football in its history. The shellacking at the hands of Denmark last November was a sobering reality check for Irish football fans. We know we're nowhere near the top table in football, and we likely won't get there soon.
We're higher up in the rugby union world rankings, but we've still failed to get past a quarterfinal in the World Cup and until we properly make a mark in that competition, can Ireland claim to be a truly elite rugby country?
And while the GAA has great appeal, at their heart, gaelic games remain provincial, played by in large by Irish people in Ireland.
Racing is such a powerful sport because Irish trainers stand toe-to-toe with the best in the world, and often win. Best of all, we frequently flex our muscle against our neighbours across the Irish Sea.
By any objective measure, Ireland dominate horse racing, no matter the season.
Fair enough – people can point to Charlie Haughey’s (in)famous tax exemption for stallions and government support for prize-money, but the success of Irish racing globally is nothing short of incredible. Last year at the Cheltenham Festival, 19 of the 28 winners were Irish-trained, despite all having to travel to Britain and a massive numerical disadvantage.
Aidan O’Brien’s feats worldwide with the behemoth Coolmore have rightly earned him the title as the world’s greatest trainer. And in the Melbourne Cup last year, the race that stops the Australian nation, the first three home were Irish-trained!
Aidan saddled the second, his son Joseph the winner and Willie Mullins the third, prompting the last-named’s son Patrick to memorably remark that they’d gone 10,000 miles to be beaten by two horses trained within 50 miles of them.
Aidan O'Brien did not even make the 14 nominees for RTÉ Sportsperson of the Year of 2017, despite a world-record 28 Group/Grade-One race victories – and there was barely a peep in racing circles giving out about same.
2. Sisters do it for themselves
The shoddy treatment of the Irish women’s football players was exposed last year when our star players secured a deal with the FAI over basic entitlements after threatening strike action. In the same year, the ladies’ Gaelic football All-Ireland final drew a crowd of over 46,000, emphasising what could be achieved in women’s sport.
In racing, it is increasingly the case that nobody cares what gender you are. Nina Carberry has been the ‘get-out girl’ for punters in the last race of the day for many years and unquestionably is one of our most talented amateur riders. When Rachael Blackmore turned professional, many wondered was she mad; within a couple of years, she was champion ‘conditional’, the title for apprentice jumps jockeys, a stunning realisation.
Dubliner Lisa O’Neill has captured the iconic and lucrative Kerry National chase two years in a row for Michael O’Leary, who also uses Blackmore, Carberry and Katie O’Farrell on his horses. And a man like O’Leary does not make soft business decisions: he uses these riders because they are so darn talented in a sport where there is no prejudicial pay gap and which is staffed roughly 50-50 on sex lines.
Finally, there are our trainers, like Jessica Harrington, who won both the Irish Grand National and Gold Cup at 70 last year, the first female trainer to win the latter. In the Cheltenham winners’ circle, the ever-ebullient Harrington held court, her arm still in a cast from a recent skiing accident. She was back riding out at home shortly afterwards.
3. Racing's stars do not behave like other sporting stars
At a time when floods of money and the self-absorbed gaze of social media have driven a real wedge between those who play sport and those who support it, racing remains a refreshing breath of fresh air. In fact, for many, it's a reminder to many why we fell in love with sport in the first place. You won't see the vast majority of Irish jockeys or trainers driving down O'Connell St in a 181 Range Rover blasting loud music. A spirit of humility runs through racing. In fact, one thing that makes Irish racing so extraordinary is that you can mingle beside a champion trainer while one of his horses is racing. Whereas sports stars are increasingly aloof and from a journalistic perspective next to unapproachable (in an Irish context anyway), Aidan O’Brien and Willie Mullins – arguably the greatest Flat and Jumps trainers in the world respectively – are incredibly humble and available for interviews too.
There isn’t much Conor McGregor bombast about this duo. O’Brien has probably never given a word of public self-praise, and little more privately, while Mullins’ humility betrays the shy gentleman in his father, the legendary Paddy.
4 Brave to the point of madness
Whether it's a bone-crunching tackle by a backrow at the Aviva or a hard shoulder by a cornerback at Croke Park that flattens a forward, the Irish sports fan loves a bit of grit and steel in a sporting icon - just as long as it's within with the rules. But there are no harder sportspeople in the country than jockeys. Name another sport where the active participants are followed in every event by an ambulance. Jockeys are brave to the point of madness, engaging in combat that is insanely dangerous, and Irish ones no different.
Take our greatest one, Ruby Walsh – conveniently injured with a broken leg at the moment – as an example. In 1999, he broke his leg riding in the Czech republic. He later broke the same leg while schooling a horse and was out of action for a total of five months that season, but recovered in time to partner Papillon to win his first Grand National.
He has fractured his wrist twice, dislocated one hip and fractured the other, cracked his elbow, dislocated both shoulders and suffered cracked and badly bruised vertebrae. A fall at Cheltenham in 2008 resulted in him having his spleen removed. He returned to the saddle 27 days later.
No feigning injury for these boys and girls. There will undoubtedly be a lot of brave performances this weekend, with players putting their bodies on the line, but don't forget how much physical pain jockeys endure for their sport.
5. Just get to the Dublin Racing Festival
Irish racing facilities are improving – notably the legendary Curragh track, which is being modernised into a venue befitting its stature, while Naas unveils a superb owners’ and trainers’ bar on Sunday which offers an exceptional vantage point of the action.
Few if any beat Leopardstown and, with the world’s best jumps horses, trainers and jockeys in action in Foxrock this weekend, you know where to be. If you haven’t yet succumbed to the sight of brave, beautiful horses jumping at 35 miles per hour – with our wallet balance perhaps all the better after it – give it a go.
