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Brian O'Connor

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Maths For Dummies

Punchestown FestivalPunchestown Festival
© Photo Healy Racing

A blizzard of complex stats, tots, trends and percentages will accompany the trainer's championship at Punchestown this week. Gordon Elliott V Willie Mullins is the heavyweight clash which has dominated the 2016-17 campaign and promises to bring a remarkable season to a memorable climax. So facts will be flung and statistics slung. But facts and truth aren't synonymous and the truth is the most significant sum in all this is pretty straightforward.

That's the €422,112 the top five horses among the 60 Michael O'Leary removed from Willie Mullins last September have won in Ireland this season.

Of course strictly adding and subtracting on that basis doesn't take into account any number of altered permutations and scenarios about who might not have run where and against whom had the split not taken place. But neither does it shake the basic point which is that the heaviest blow landed this season was not thrown by either Mullins or Elliott but by O'Leary.

Valseur Lido collected €90,100 in his two starts for Henry De Bromhead but the other four - Outlander (€115,500) Apple's Jade (€75,500) A Toi Phil (€96,012) and Don Poli (€45,000) - all went to Elliott. That's over €330,000 of a prizemoney swing. Without it there would hardly be betting on who winds up champion trainer this Saturday.

As it is it will surely require Mullins to enjoy the most successful Punchestown he's ever had - and for Elliott's runners to suddenly underwhelm - if a €400,000 plus deficit is to be overturned this week. Betting the whole house it won't happen mightn't be wise. But any layer worth their salt would surely push the boat out on such a scenario.

The championship battle does illustrate again however the significance of that Mullins-O'Leary split.

At the time the ultimate verdict on who the winner and loser might be was expected to come at Cheltenham. That turned out to be inconclusive though. O'Leary had four winners but grumbled they weren't the top races: Mullins relinquished the leading trainer award but half a dozen winners in the final two days was no disaster.

Now it's odds-on that he'll relinquish the trainer's title here. But considering star names such as Annie Power and Faugheen also didn't contribute it could be argued it's a minor miracle Mullins still has a sniff of the championship at all.

So in the longer term, and considering O'Leary's stated readiness to have horses with Mullins again, could the next most significant set of racing figures come this summer if both men manage to thrash out a rapprochement? And if it does happen, how interesting will it trying to find out who blinked first?

Neverthless, the record 19 Irish trained winners at Cheltenham will always be the headline from this 2016-17 campaign. The festival's importance is so overwhelming it dwarfs everything else. It's why it will be National Hunt racing's brochure presentation during Ireland's nearest equivalent this week.

And dismissing it entirely would be as wrong-headed as pretending the achievements of a tiny minority of elite owners and trainers accurately reflect day-to-day reality for the majority of others.

The Racehorse Trainers Association has estimated up to 85 per cent of its membership struggle to make a living. Even if the agricultural sector generally is famous for the 'Beal Bocht' that's still a figure stark enough to have provoked Horse Racing Ireland into some significant programme changes for next season designed to aid the squeezed middle.

It's still the case though that Gordon Elliott's success remains the unavoidable riposte to those complaining about a competitive closed shop.

This is someone who started out 11 years ago with three horses and no family background in the game whatsoever. He was the ultimate 'blow in' to racing. Now he's on the verge of being crowned champion. It's a sporting success story to rival anything.

Michael O'Leary was also centre-stage this season through his spat with the British Horseracing Authority handicapper, Phil Smith, one in which valid questions raised by more than O'Leary as to why Irish ratings aren't published got rather subsumed in some rather childish flag-waving and name-calling.

Cheltenham's handicap results rather put a lot of that to bed and the performance of Presenting Percy in particular when winning the Pertemps indicated a horse so far ahead of the handicapper as to make any persecution complex on his behalf seem rather silly.

Those shrewdies who reckoned him a Grade 1 horse all along could have that theory put to the test in Wednesday's three mile novice hurdle where his likely clash with Penhill, and possibly Death Duty, will be worth going a long way to see. And Presenting Percy is top-rated!

Another fascinating Grade 1 contender this week is Great Field in the Ryanair Novice Chase. The JP McManus runner missed Cheltenham completely but he's three out of three over fences and it will take a quick horse to keep tabs on him. His habit of going low at his obstacles might make it hair-raising sometimes but this could be a real two-mile star of the future.

And finally, it's getting a bit tedious having to bang on about the new Rule 212, especially on the verge of a week where everything will be trying for its life. But there remains a sense that quite a few trainers and jockeys really do need to dilute their indignation at the new running and riding regime.

Protecting your own patch is one thing. It's quite another painting melodramatic pictures of young horses having their careers ruined through being whipped into hating the game by jockeys under pressure to 'pander' to punters .

In reality very little has changed. Stewards still realise the nuances that apply to different races and to different horses at different stages of their career. What has changed is that stewards now have a mechanism to effectively pursue those who might be taking the mickey when it comes to the education process.

Apart from that little or nothing is different. So what's the problem?