REMEMBER last year? Going into Galway week, One Cool Poet’s list of entries was as wide as it was deep: a handicap hurdle on Monday, a beginners’ chase on Tuesday, flat handicaps on Tuesday and Thursday.

He didn’t get into the handicap hurdle on Monday, so that was trainer Matthew Smith’s Plan A out the window. He got into the flat handicap on Tuesday though, a one-mile handicap, for a horse whose previous run had been in a two-and-a-half-mile beginners’ chase. It didn’t matter. Billy Lee delivered him fast and late to get up and win by a neck.

The DRFG Partnership – an Offaly partnership – celebrated like it was the end of Galway week for them, the pinnacle, the 1982 All-Ireland, Shane Lowry winning the Open but, actually, it was only the beginning. They weren’t even close to the summit.

The plan, as long as the horse came out of the race well, was to go back to Galway on the Saturday and run in the one-and-a-half-mile handicap, but it didn’t look like he was going to get into that race. He needed 17 horses above him in the handicap to come out in order to let him in. Instead, they figured, again as long as the horse was well, they’d run him in the one-and-a-half-mile handicap on Thursday.

Bounced

The horse was well all right. He bounced home with his trainer on Tuesday evening and he bounced back to Galway on Thursday and, under his 6lb penalty, he won again. More impressively this time.

They left him in the Saturday race too, and he sneaked in at the bottom and, well, you know how it ended. He carried his double penalty, 12lb extra, and he won again.

Only one horse in the 150-year history of it had won three times at the same Galway Festival – Busted Tycoon in 2013 – and no horse had won three times on the flat. Matthew Smith’s only lament was that there wasn’t a race for him on the Sunday.

Alas, we won’t be seeing One Cool Poet this week. Nothing to do with Covid-19, it’s just a slight setback. Hopefully we’ll see him later in the season.