Picture the scene: Kim, my long-suffering wife, is trying to sleep at 3 am, but her husband keeps looking at his phone. In fairness to him, he is not checking on declarations (well, not just yet – he has decided not to do that until after 4 am), but he is checking the time continually to see if it is 4 am yet!
You see, that’s the problem with living in the US, declarations close at 10am in Ireland but not where we live. I had reconciled myself to Suprise Package not getting into the Petingo handicap at Leopardstown tomorrow. I had not booked a car to the airport, I hadn’t even checked in, and, as far as packing was concerned, what was the point? He couldn’t have had a worse ballot number; four horses were all on the same mark, and he was the one who would get into the race last.
However, this race had been on the radar for several months, and hope springs eternal.
So at 4.13 am, I decided it was time to get up, position myself at the dining room table, and watch the declarations tick over.
With 47 minutes to go, the situation was remarkably hopeful: the maximum field was 23, but only nine had been declared by seven trainers. I have watched this movie too often to get excited, but this did seem low.
My visit to the fridge to get an orange juice proved fateful as, on my return, there were 16 declared by nine trainers; this was the Mullins factor kicking in. Not content with dominating the National Hunt scene, he is now setting his sights on every staying handicap on the flat. He had just mass-declared five horses, all of whom would likely be better on softer ground. I had estimated the possible field on the basis he would run only three of them, so my hopes were now in disarray.
On the brighter side, there were still only 16 declared, and now there were less than 30 minutes to go.
However, things were about to change. This is how I remember the next tortuous half-hour:
9.40 am (4.40 USA) Maximum field exceeded
Ok HRI. So, tell us what the lowest ballot number in the race is! It took a few minutes, and then the number 11 appeared. Right Paul, don’t panic – we are number 8, and as long as it doesn’t say 7, we are in the race.
It stayed and stayed (and stayed) on 11. At 4.49 am, with only 11 minutes to go, was it going to change? Why would trainers play a game of Declaration Chicken?; declare and let the cards fall as they may. Why leave it until the last minute?
My questions were answered seconds later at 4:49:46 am when the number 8 appeared as the last horse to get into the race.
Now, you may be wondering how I can be so precise. Well, HRI has a curious system for updating declarations. It goes something like this (using local times):
7.00am – the first declarations
The are no updates until 8.00 am, then no more updates until 9 am.
It then moves to one-minute updates until, at some point (I think the last 15 minutes), the system goes crazy. There is an update at one second past the minute and then 45 seconds later; so, for example, updates were coming at 9:50:01am and then 9:50:46am
I now had 10 minutes to watch these updates and hope the number 8 never changed. The stress levels were not helped by the fact that the updates are, shall we say, less than smooth. The numbers flash as the page reloads at 01 and 46 seconds past the minute. The number 8 would disappear, and all I could do was hope it would reappear a millisecond later. I got into the habit (if you can develop a habit in less than 10 minutes) of being glued to the screen between :46 and :01 seconds and then going for a 40-second walk around the house, arriving back in perfect time for the :46-second update. Stress does not even begin to describe it.
You all know the outcome. Number 8 never disappeared, and all was set by 10 am – although I kept watching for another two minutes to ensure that some recalcitrant trainer had not forgotten to declare and was trying to strong-arm the HRI into allowing an after-time entry.
I want to say there was some drama over the jockey bookings, but there really was not. He was set to carry 8:7, and not too many Irish jockeys can do that weight, and those who can would be committed to particular large trainers. We had Jamie Powell lined up, and we were more than happy to have him on board.
He was champion Apprentice in 2023 and is an excellent rider. He has had a quiet year so far in 2024, but that may all change tomorrow.
I rarely see Peter so excited about a horse; he has “never had him as well as he is now”. He is ready and will run a big race; we’ll see if he is good enough.
I will be there despite a delayed journey, which meant I was still in the US at 7 am (Irish time) this morning. I throw that in not for sympathy but as an excuse for this blog, which, on rereading, is not up to even my normal standard. There will come a time when I regret not tearing it all up and starting again. However, that will not happen tonight as I need to eat before sleeping for twelve hours!