Shooting for another Murphy family Triumph

Racing

One of the golden rules of talking in racing circles is to be careful of the company when passing the time with a spot of character assassination. No other sport quite matches the interbred communities of the turf and if you blacken someone in a pub in Newmarket or Lambourn, you can be sure a relative's ear is not far away.

Remember this if you ever have anything tart to disseminate about the Murphy family. Declan, the former jockey turned media analyst, may be the figurehead of the brood, but there are plenty of others out there. The Murphy family home is in Hospital, Co Limerick, which is said to be a small village. That means there can be few other people living in the place. Declan has four brothers and three sisters and, like him, one of his older siblings, Eamon, has won a race at the Cheltenham Festival. A third name, however, may be added to the Cotswolds scroll a week on Thursday.

Pat Murphy, the second eldest of the tribe, should, according to the bookmakers, go close to saddling Shooting Light to victory in the Triumph Hurdle.

Such an eventuality is being portrayed as a quaint piece of giant-slaying, partly because Murphy supervises just 15 horses at his yard at Portbury, Avon. These are the premises occupied until his death by Murphy's father-in-law, Richard Holder, and a location which has led to both men being referred to, unfortunately, as Bristol handlers.

Neither is Murphy a big gun, but this ignores the fact that he and his wife, Louise, Holder's daughter, have played a part in one of the Triumph Hurdle's best recent records. "We were involved with Ikdam and Wahiba [both of which ran under Holder's licence], who were first and second in the Triumph, so we've been there," Murphy said yesterday. "On the Flat we've had our share of decent sprinters. We've prepared horses for the Stewards' Cup and the Wokingham [old favourites in Bertie Wooster, Jigsaw Boy and Sir Joey] and had them placed.

"We've no doubts about our own ability to produce a horse on the day. It's everyone else that seems to question that."

Pat Murphy, 39 last week, was a jockey of some standing, riding 100 winners before an awful day at Taunton in 1988 changed his physique. He broke his wrist, elbow and shoulder. Intact, though, was the Murphy trait of loquaciousness, which ensured he would not struggle in the communication business of training. These boys have not just kissed the Blarney Stone, they have had a tempestuous affair with it.

Declan Murphy's omnipresence on our screens is such that it is hard to believe Dolly was the first mammal to be cloned. It is less than three years since Arcot threw him into the Grim Reaper's parlour at Haydock, but, a near-death experience later, he was soon back to his finest chattering class. Pat, too, seems to require respiration as regularly as a sperm whale, but there is more to him than verbiage. He picked out Shooting Light, whose only credential was a win at Hamilton, for 21,000gns at the July Sales.

At first, a return on the investment looked unlikely. "About three weeks after we bought him I rang the owner to tell him the horse was showing us absolutely nothing," Murphy said. "He was working worse than a selling plater. Even then though I got the impression he was working just enough for the horse he was working with."

The racecourse has had the awakening properties of a freezing shower on Shooting Light and he goes to battle after two hurdling wins and single defeat, when conceding chunks of weight. Victory in the Triumph Hurdle might see an unusual use for the race's prize. Murphy smoked cigarettes endlessly as a jockey but has since changed to a pipe. "I started smoking it at home because I thought it gave me an air of authority," he said. A Cheltenham trophy might be the most memorable receptacle in which to tap out his dottle.