The last time I visited the Punchestown Festival was as a guest of Blue Square, kids ask your dad.<\/p>\n
I have vague memories of being in a marquee in the centre of the track and I definitely remember being taken ill in a Naas Chinese restaurant later on in the evening. The waiter was panicking it was the prawn starter that I\u2019d barely touched. Sadly, it was the lavish hospitality from earlier taking a toll on a younger, more foolhardy man.<\/p>\n
No such dangers on Tuesday, from the sanctuary of the visitors\u2019 press room. An away fixture this one but the same food as the home team in their more lavish setting.<\/p>\n
On the track the home players were always going to dominate, the British raiding party weak numerically and in terms of quality too.<\/p>\n
I walk out to watch the first and Sam Twiston-Davies stops for a chat. He has a ride on Thursday and is having a two-day recce beforehand. It\u2019s all in the preparation.<\/p>\n
I currently have an eye condition which means they start watering wildly at unpredictable moments. I\u2019ve lost count of the number of people who think I\u2019ve over-reacted to a story they\u2019ve been telling me about a shopping expedition or kids\u2019 sports day.<\/p>\n
In the tented bar outside the away press dressing room a talented singer is entertaining those sheltering from the wind. For a moment she too thought she\u2019d reduced me to floods of tears with an admittedly haunting rendition of My Heart Will Go On.<\/p>\n
And the battle for the Irish trainers\u2019 title still goes on. The victory of Western Fold in the Grade One Dooley Insurance Group Champion Novice Chase is a big one for Gordon Elliott.<\/p>\n
But then normality resumes.<\/p>\n
Because this card, this day, was always about the William Hill Champion Chase.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The last time I visited the Punchestown Festival was as a guest of Blue Square, kids ask your…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":370886,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":["post-422775","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/422775","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=422775"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/422775\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/370886"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=422775"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=422775"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=422775"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}