Beef Or Salmon was a Christmas banker at Leopardstown

Beef Or Salmon. A choice many will face at the festive dinner table.

But for Michael Hourigan there was no such decision to be made, just joyful pleasure provided by a standing dish that was often the brightest star of Christmas.

Hourigan said: “He meant everything to me and he was a super horse.

“It was a pity we couldn’t run the Cheltenham Gold Cup in Ireland, otherwise he might have won one. He was just a brilliant horse. He turned up at Christmas every year and was just a pleasure to train.”

Still the only three-time winner of the race now known as the Savills Chase, Beef Or Salmon’s yuletide affinity with Leopardstown would often stretch into February, as he also registered a hat-trick in what was then the Hennessy Cognac Gold Cup, now simply the Irish Gold Cup.

They were triumphs that would take him to the top of the staying division and not only into the hearts and minds of the Irish public but also the man who was proud to call himself his trainer.

Hourigan said: “Every Christmas he did his job and then would go and do it again in February and whether he loved Leopardstown or not, only he can tell you that, but the races were there and he performed on the days – he was a super horse.

“I think he was rated 174 at one stage and there’s horses nowhere near that at the moment.

“He loved jumping, he was a super leaper who rarely made mistakes and was a dream to train. I was looking for another one 20 years later and could never find one.”

Beef Or Salmon’s exploits would come in a time when the super owners had yet to fully emerge and while Closutton may have been bristling, Willie Mullins had still not stamped his authority on an Irish scene where Hourigan was a seen-it-all veteran with every right to call himself a player at the top table.

Emerging at the tail end of stablemate Dorans Pride’s illustrious career, Beef Or Salmon’s popularity not only stretched far and wide in an era where the great racehorses became public property, but his success brought “memories to last a lifetime” for the now-retired 78-year-old who exited the scene after more than 50 years service to the sport.

“He fit into the shoes of Dorans Pride when he finished and to have a horse like Dorans Pride and then Beef Or Salmon, it gave me 15 years at the top level and memories to last a lifetime,” said Hourigan.

“I was very lucky to get horses like those and there will be many trainers probably better than me who will never be lucky enough to get horses like those. They made me a bigger trainer than I probably was and we had a great time.

“It’s a different game now, and the likes of Dorans Pride, Danoli and Beef Or Salmon they were everybody’s horse back then.”

He went on: “These were great horses who didn’t cost much money and now you have to give half a million for one.

“The men who owned Beef Or Salmon were offered a huge fee for him at one stage and they said ‘I’ve waited all my life for a horse like him and he’s not for sale’. It wasn’t about the money, it was about the fun we all got out of him.”

Beef Or Salmon would win 19 of his 51 career starts with 10 coming at the highest level, but for Hourigan pinpointing one single day that brought the most satisfaction proves difficult, as he reminisces about a champion who even on the cusp of turning 30 commands pride of place among the ‘living legends’ paddock at the Irish National Stud in retirement.

“All his wins gave me great satisfaction and you could say the day he beat The Listener (2007) when he started to walk going to the line, that was a great day,” added Hourigan.

“It was all done and dusted at the second-last and the last, but Beef Or Salmon would always keep on going to the line whereas the other fellow didn’t.

“People got very excited that day, Beef Or Salmon was nearing the end of his road at that stage but it showed his toughness.”

The sole asterisk in the career of Beef Or Salmon comes when assessing his trials and tribulations at the Cheltenham Festival.

He ran in the Gold Cup five times, with his career spanning both Best Mate and Kauto Star.

The best Beef Or Salmon could muster at Prestbury Park was an honourable fourth to Best Mate in his hat-trick-sealing year of 2004, but Hourigan can trace the tale of woe back to his fall on his maiden visit to Gloucestershire a year prior.

He explained: “When he got the fall in Cheltenham the first year, I should have gone for the Sun Alliance instead of the Gold Cup and given him chance to get to know the place, but he looked the part and Gold Cup horses don’t come around too often.

“He fell early and that was it and I think he remembered he fell there. When we went back the following year he refused to go into the pre-parade ring and he stood still and looked at it as if to say, ‘oh no, I’m back here again’.

“I think it was a mental thing with him and he damaged his hamstring as well the day he fell. When Edredon Bleu beat him in the Clonmel Oil, Timmy Murphy said he wasn’t the same horse and it was only then we discovered the hamstring.

“He took a long time to sort out and I would say he still had a bit of fear. You see the rugby players, they will always worry about a hamstring going a second time and I think he was the same.”