The Fat Lady Sings At The End

Cursing the weather might just be the ultimate in futility but if the elements conspire to deny us an Irish Champion Stakes epic quite a few fists will still be shaken at the skies. The prospect of Golden Horn, Gleneagles, Free Eagle & Co in action really could mean the best race run anywhere in the world in 2015, a worthy 'Champions Weekend' highlight, and potentially epic in its dramatic scope. So why is this fat lady singing when the show ain't half over?

There's a penchant in this country for thinking ourselves very different, and sometimes going out of our way to try and prove it. But it is very weird when the highlight of a show isn't kept for the big finale at the end. Yet that's the prospect for a €4 million 'Champions Weekend' show which has its headline act stuck in the middle.

Any director will confirm you rarely get more than one shot at building an audience to a crescendo. After that, a certain ho-hum element kicks in that no amount of shouting, screaming or posturing alters. Yet this weekend's scheduling means that that is the Curragh's unenviable lot, having to follow what the whole thing is being billed around, left with the thankless task of keeping the stage warm while the fat lady is on her way home.

The Champion Stakes is definitely the highlight. It was last year too. It will be practically every year. That's the nature of the race. It's got the biggest prizemoney and a ten furlong Group 1 in early-September is the optimum for most of Europe's very best middle-distance talent. In comparison very few are doing themselves a mischief at the idea of Agent Murphy running in the Leger, and by definition two year old races contain relatively unknown quantities. The Champion is the big fat screeching lady here.

So she should be top of the bill, and at the top of the show. The natural narrative should lead towards her, building to a clear finale. In the midst of last year's inaugural success it seemed churlish to remark upon the comparatively flat atmosphere at the Curragh following all that Champion Stakes drama the day before but it was there. And there's no need for it. All it requires is a switch of dates: put the Curragh on Saturday and let Sunday to Leopardstown.

The Breeders Cup doesn't put the Classic at the end of the first day. The Melbourne Cup is at the end of carefully coordinated campaign that gets an entire nation into a tizzy. The Arc has a couple of races after it but that's fine since so does the Cheltenham Gold Cup. The highlight doesn't have to be absolute last. But it's perverse not to put it towards the end of the big-picture narrative, especially when it appears like a win-win for both tracks.

The Curragh can be a tough place to generate atmosphere but it's got a triple-Group 1 card that's worth getting excited about. Last year's sense of 'after the Governor's ball' is avoidable. All what's required is a little bit more flexibility of the type that helped organise this 'Champions Weekend' concept in the first place. It's a concept still in its early stages with nothing set in stone so why not manoeuvre things a little more because where there's a will, politically, there's usually a way.

Presumably the European Pattern Committee is as political as anything else so hopefully some will is applied to allow 'Champions Weekend' a stage to itself. As it is, Ireland's flat racing sales pitch to the world competes with the Doncaster St Leger and Arc Trials day at Longchamp which again looks to leave the Curragh getting the short end of the stick. The Leger is sadly increasingly becoming a curio in elite terms. Arc Trials day isn't. The big international story this Sunday won't be the Curragh but Treve's continuing build up to Arc history in the Vermeille.

This glut of action is in marked contrast to the weekend just behind us. Haydock's Sprint Cup and the Grosser Preis Von Baden were Europe's only Group 1's. Surely for something billed as a 'weekend,' in purely racing terms this is the calendar slot that best suits 'Champions Weekend.'

The counter argument is the profile-battle it faces on those dates in terms of clashing with All Ireland Hurling Final weekend. This time there was also the Dublin-Mayo football replay to reckon with, not to mention international rugby, plus the national football team, in something of a perfect storm of competing events. Such a plethora of other sporting options however is unusual and even if it wasn't, should that be enough to decide when Irish flat racing's biggest show is staged?

'Champions Weekend' is at heart a sales pitch to an international audience which has little awareness of domestic issues such as hurling or football. It might be worth examining the make-up of the attendance over next weekend and how many of them are likely to have been tempted away by counter attractions: probably not as many as is thought. And even if it isn't, what would be wrong with racing backing its very best product against the competition?

Since so much appears to depend on ground conditions for the Champion Stakes, it's hard to be definitive in prediction terms due to the likely line-up being fluid. Still, I suspect even if everything does show up, it could ultimately turn into a clash of the generations between Golden Horn and Free Eagle. The latter runs whatever the ground, and John Gosden is willing to contemplate running the Derby winner on good to soft. Brilliance might be the ultimate virtue but versatility counts too.

Maybe the importance of ground conditions at both Leopardstown and the Curragh is overstated anyway, and fascination with race times.

For instance in July, Leopardstown's seven furlong Tyros Stakes was won by Deauville in 1.28.48 on the back of a strongly run race staged on good to firm ground. A month later, Herald The Dawn won the seven furlong Futurity on yielding to soft ground at the Curragh, a meeting at which 20 runners were taken out due to the change in going. His time was 1.26.59, almost two seconds quicker than the Tyros.

The Leopardstown race did have an extra 24 yards added to it due to stalls being repositioned but what conclusions can be taken from this? Deauville is currently next year's Derby favourite. Is Herald The Dawn a potential superstar then? Or do we go with Luca Cumani's line that time only matters when you're in jail?