Reflect for a moment on Irish stables’ dominance at Cheltenham in recent years and Willie Mullins, Gordon Elliott and Henry de Bromhead may well be the first trainers that spring to mind. In terms of their strike-rate at the home of jumping, though, all three are several lengths adrift of John McConnell, who trains a significantly smaller string in County Meath but has still saddled an impressive nine winners from his last 41 runners at the track.
That total includes his first winner at the Festival meeting – Seddon, a 20-1 shot, in the ultra-competitive Plate eight months ago – as well as three wins from eight starters at the October meeting last year. As a result, shrewd punters will look long and hard at McConnell’s select team of horses for the track’s valuable three-day November meeting, including Kinbara, a runner in the Grade Two novice hurdle which is one of the feature events on Friday’s opening card.
McConnell has been a regular visitor to British tracks since 2017, when his name started to appear on cards at tracks within (relatively) easy reach of his yard including Carlisle, Kelso and Wolverhampton. It was a smart move, given the ultra-competitive nature of the racing at home, and having won with 13 of his 30 runners in the UK in 2017, he has maintained an overall strike rate of 23.6% over the last seven years.
In simple terms, if McConnell books one of his horses onto the ferry, he expects it to go close. “Cheltenham’s been a lucky place for us,” he said on Thursday, “but we don’t run for the sake of it, just to be at Cheltenham, we only run to be competitive. It’s the same whenever we go across the water, it’s with something we think will go very close or we wouldn’t bother sending it.
“It’s ferociously competitive in Ireland and in terms of field sizes and things like that there’s also a difference, so maybe it was slightly easier [in the UK], but it’s getting very competitive everywhere. We go to a lot of northern and Scottish tracks and there’s several trainers there that are making big strides, so there’s no gimmes anywhere.”
McConnell is effectively self-taught as a trainer, having taken out a restricted licence in 2001 shortly after qualifying as a vet. “I got the licence nearly straight out of college and for the first seven or eight years, I was still working as a vet,” he says.
“But I always wanted to train, the veterinary was security more than anything else and I always had the view that I could go back to it if I needed to, but thankfully we’ve done well in the last few years so at the minute we’re sticking with training, anyway.”
Knowledge acquired at veterinary school, he feels, helped to compensate for not having followed the more traditional “pupil-assistant” route into training, “both in terms of the ways of getting them fit and also maybe picking up things like injuries a bit quicker”. And the fact that Kinbara is getting an early look at Cheltenham, as Seddon did at the October meeting in 2022, could also be something to note.
“It’s a big step up for him, obviously,” he says, “but he needed to go up in grade after two easy wins. He’s had a nice break [since July], he’s ready to start again and with anything that might be going in March, we like to give them a look at Cheltenham beforehand.
“[Likely favourite] Captain Teague looks to be a very nice horse and there’s other potentially nice horses in there as well, but he’s very well and when he ran in the [Grade Two] Aintree bumper [in April], he was only beaten around 11 lengths and he got murdered in the race as well.”
Captain Teague was undeniably impressive when making a successful hurdling debut at Chepstow last month but Kinbara (3.35) ran to a similar level in the summer and looks over-priced at around 11-2.
Cheltenham 1.10 White Rhino (nap) 1.45 Madara 2.20 Mighty Tom (nb) 2.55 Galvin 3.30 Kinbara 4.05 Redbridge Rambler
Doncaster 12.30 Karaktere D’Enfer 1.00 Fearless Action 1.35 Rascal 2.10 Abaya Du Mathan 2.45 Vision Of Hope 3.20 Gaboriot 3.53 Burrows Hall
Newcastle 1.20 Brunello Breeze 1.55 Sagauteur 2.30 Assailant 3.05 Animato 3.40 Brooklyn Nine Nine 4.15 Involvement 4.50 Welcome Dream 5.20 Goldmine Girl 5.52 Wichahpi
Wolverhampton 4.30 Show Compassion 5.00 Global Effort 5.30 Timeless Charm 6.00 Roman Secret 6.30 Come On John 7.00 Graffiti 7.30 Flatley 8.00 Lady Valentine 8.30 Just Janet
Elsewhere on the Friday card, Galvin (2.55) could benefit from his Festival experience over the course, and also Rob James’s 7lb claim, in his rematch with Delta Work in the Cross Country Handicap Chase, while Madara (1.45), who unseated three out when still going well in a similar race at the October meeting, is interesting at a double-figure price.
White Rhino (1.10) should follow up a recent success in the opener, while Cian Collins’s Mighty Tom (2.20), second to a very useful novice on his fencing debut at Cork this month, also has decent claims in the Grade Two novice chase.
