No knobbly stick goes unwaved on St Patrick’s Day at Cheltenham

Sound the Riverdance klaxon. Stroke a lucky fake leprechaun beard. On 17 March at Cheltenham, let no knobbly stick go unwaved. For all its convivial, booze-soaked similarities to every other Festival day, a St Patrick’s Day at the Festival typically comes packed with a little more oomph. For “oomph”, confected marketing blarney, whether it’s the branded green scarves distributed by a well-known banter bookie, or the occasionally grating misuse of that byword for diddly-aye shamrockery that is “craic”.

Which is not to say the Cheltenham Festival has not had a long, hugely profitable and mutually agreeable relationship with the Irish, who have always been happy to immerse themselves fully in its welcoming embrace. Hyped up paddywhackery is habitually sold by broadcasters, bookies and the Jockey Club in their efforts to promote an apparently fierce four-day rivalry between the British and Irish, when in truth any perceived hostilities between the hosts and their bawdy visitors have always been completely contrived.

A sport in which winning is everything and competing owners, jockeys and trainers could scarcely be less concerned by the particular mast to which their national colours are nailed, horse racing is actually one of few sporting pursuits in which a simmering undercurrent of animosity between the two nations doesn’t exist. While the assorted members of the Irish Flooring Porter syndicate stole Thursday’s show with their bravura celebrations following the Stayers’ Hurdle, the mish-mash of accents from both sides of the Irish sea that roared Allaho and Paul Townend up the home straight in the Ryanair Chase demonstrated a more mundane truth. Most racegoers could not care less which trainer’s yard the horse on which