Mouse Morris: 'There’s more to racing than Cheltenham, but it’s still very, very big.' Photograph: Alan Crowhurst/Getty Images
It’s a lot more than half a century since anyone has called him Michael. Almost as soon as the public school-educated son of the former Olympic Committee chairman Lord Killanin decided he wanted to be a jockey, he got his nickname decided for him in the hurly-burly of yard work. It’s an instantly recognisable racing moniker. So, at 72, given a shot, presumably he’d have the same again please.
There’s no danger of that now. Even those most indifferent to racing know something special happens on the side of a Gloucestershire hill next week. The publicity machine makes sure of it. What was once an annual gathering of rural tweedy and wide-boy punters, where Irish success was prized as an exception rather than the rule, is slotted firmly into the corporate calendar.
“In the old days, a big owner had four or five horses. Now, there’s a bundle of them with 30 plus. They can afford it and they’re great for their trainers. It’s not right or wrong, it’s just different.” Just as it always has been, the key ingredient is the financial clout that top owners bring to those who they support.
“The fact that it is four days has diluted the racing enormously, which is terribly sad. When Northern Game won the Triumph Hurdle there were 30 runners in it. Now you get very few runners in the Triumph because you get them in the Boodles instead. The irony is that such dilution has coincided with much of the season getting reduced to little more than an appetiser for what a growing number believe to be an increasingly unsatisfactory main course. Timing it right for Cheltenham has become the ultimate gauge, a juggle that Constitution Hill’s absence from the Champion Hurdle confirms comes with risks.
“He would as easily divide a fence as jump it!” O’Grady admits. But on the day that counted he earned his niche in festival history, and for a couple of new kids not yet 25.
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