The Irish aren’t just good at winning horse races: they are in the Super League when it comes to celebrating victories. After Shark Hanlon’s Hewick had collected the £90,000 first prize in the bet365 Gold Cup at Sandown Park last Saturday, the red-haired trainer said with a twinkle: ‘The plan was to go home this evening. The plan just changed.’ I hope the craic was good: the year before, when Shark had his first Grade One victory with Skyace, he went home and fed 50 calves before opening a bottle of champagne only for his boxer bitch to start producing a series of eight pups – a process that engaged him until 5 a.m.
There is nothing sinister about the name Shark. John ‘Shark’ Hanlon is a big man who earned the soubriquet as an under-14 hurler because he was about a foot taller than his contemporaries. Until the foot-and-mouth epidemic of 2001 he was a cattle dealer.
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