cheltenham: day four.

​Can I say, without the threat of recrimination, that I found this year’s Gold Cup somewhat underwhelming? Well, I said it, so I will continue. In fact, I found the fourth day the least inspiring of the Festival, though that might be as a result of the heady heights of the day before.
It is brilliant that Willie Mullins has finally won the Gold Cup. No one deserved it more. If he had gone his whole career without at least one Gold Cup to his name it would have been as ridiculous as Nicky Henderson not winning a single race with the word ‘National’ in its title. Of course, now he has broken the hoodoo he’ll no doubt win four out of the next five Gold Cups with four different horses, though they will undoubtedly all be French-bred.
Next year the Gold Cup could be spectacular. Topofthegame, Santini, Delta Work and possibly, hopefully, Altior and Frodon. Al Boum Photo will, we must all hope, be back to retain his crown. The flip side of having a seven-year-old winning the Gold Cup is that it is a hard race and quite often fate can deal them with injury, as with Sizing John, that prevents them returning year after year as we once expected of Gold Cup winners. I suspect in the many darts Willie Mullins has thrown at the race over the decades he has sent out with expectation quite a few better horses than Al Boum Photo, which suggests to me that this year’s race was far from a classic.
Usually there is a horse to take out of the race for next year but this year I think it was more the horses that weren’t there that sit in the mind as possibilities for next year. Ratings do not ring true, of course, especially when applied to horses that have run over differing distances but Anibale Fly is now rated 174, the same as Frodon and given that Bryony Frost’s favourite warrior won the Ryanair by outstaying his rivals and that he has already won over virtually the same distance as the Gold Cup, it is not overstretching the imagination to think he would have finished first or second on Friday. I hope next year we have a good ground Gold Cup as that might tip the maestros Henderson and Nicholls into running Altior and Frodon in the big race rather than the Ryanair.
As with many people, I am sure, while he stood quite as a mouse to be shod, pondering to myself how the O’Brien’s get the colts under their care to be so well-behaved, I sort of fell in love with Sir Erec. This wonderful sport can be a right bastard when it has a mind too. It gives us unlimited joy with Frodon and Paisley Park on the Thursday and then skewers all that happiness by taking from us in the unkindest way a beautiful horse who might have reigned supreme for years to come. Still reeling.
Thinking on it for a moment, it might have been the dark shadow cast by Sir Erec’s cruel death that might have coloured my view of the Gold Cup, of the day.
Fourteen of the twenty-eight races were won by French-bred horses, the other fourteen by horses bred in Ireland. Not one British-bred horse won at the Festival, as worrying a statistic as the negativity about our sport in the corridors of Westminster. As with efforts to encourage more mares in the sport, which has proved extremely successful, something similar must be done to encourage the breeding of National Hunt stock in this country. Whether the problem lies with the type of stallion on offer to breeders or whether it is just fashion that is directing trainers to turn to France for their young horses, the situation must be addressed. Perhaps it has always been the same as I remember Richard Pitman would make a point of drawing the viewer’s attention when a big race was won by a British-bred horse.
So that is Cheltenham 2019. Let’s hope we all make Cheltenham 2020. My highlight this year was obviously Bryony Frost and Frodon. If only the B.H.A. could bottle both her passion for the sport and the horse and Frodon’s enthusiasm for the work man puts him to, the problem of funding would be half-solved. The best performance was Tiger Roll in the cross-country race. Effortless hardly does him justice. Just perfection.