golden days.

​I didn’t like it when Long Run won the Cheltenham Gold Cup, although down the line I appreciate the achievement of Sam Waley-Cohen winning the race as an amateur, albeit a Corinthian of huge ability in the saddle. Long Run’s younger legs, of course, got the better of the old ‘uns, the quite magnificent Denman and the immortal Kauto Star. Sam won the race fairly and squarely, with no hard-lucks stories assigned to either Denman or the second-best steeplechaser I have had the pleasure of witnessing. (I must put this in parentheses, repeating myself for the umpteenth time, no doubt, but if Denman had not suffered his heart problem the season after winning the Gold Cup, it would be his name lauded as second in the pantheon of steeplechasers, second only, though by quite a few digits, to Arkle).
I digress:
The Cheltenham Gold Cup does not always, to universal acclaim, provide golden days for us mere spectators to recall long into our dotage. So many times the gods insist on delivering to us the wrong result, as if we have wronged them in some way, forcing us to watch the wrong jubilant connections hugging and kissing in the winners’ enclosure, the wrong horse, as far as we are concerned, feted with praise and blessed as if he, it’s normally a he, is the second-coming. Not that lucky winners of the Cheltenham Gold Cup regularly turn up in the chronological history of the race.
Master Smudge was, though, a fortunate recipient of first place, a verdict no one would contest when he finished eight-lengths behind Tied Cottage, only for the great Irish horse to be disqualified months later due to traces of a prohibited substance being found in a post-race dope-test. Chinrullah, who finished fifth, was also disqualified for the same reason. From reading the bare result in the history book, the real hero of the 1980 Gold Cup was the horse that moved up to second, the fifteen-year-old Mac Vidi and not out-with-the-washing either, being beaten only 2½-lengths by Master Smudge, meaning he was only 2½-lengths short of actually being awarded the race. Now that would have warmed the cockles of the heart.
Outside of Desert Orchid winning in 1989 – one of the three fondest memories that will compete for my last dying thought – and the era of Denman and Kauto Star, my favourite years of the Gold Cup were between 1964, when horse racing was as fresh to me as summer fruit, and 1978, the year John Francome won the race on Midnight Court, not in traditional March but in April as the weather won the only winner the day of the Gold Cup that year.
Woodland Venture, Fort Leney, What A Myth, L’Escargot, Glencariag Lady, The Dikler, Captain Christy, Ten Up, Royal Frolic, Davy Lad and Midnight Court, legendary names of the sport, give or take one or two. And, of course, there was Spanish Steps and The Laird, Pendil, Bula, Lanzarote, a horse I can claim to have mucked-out occasionally, the quiet as a lamb Master H and back in Arkle’s time Stalbridge Colonist and the horse that should never be forgotten or overlooked, Mill House. And many, many more that should neither be forgotten nor overlooked.
I do not necessarily believe that experience improves the enjoyment of the sport you most enjoy. During the years between Arkle and Midnight Court I was pretty much wet-behind-the-ears, spectating from a sofa light-years away from the cut and thrust of the action, with little or no idea what was at the beating heart of steeplechasing. I doubt if I was even aware of the sweat and the tears of the sport. It was a spectacle beyond my understanding of its rules, its history and the people who dedicated their lives to it; every televised race an adventure of unpredictable consequences; as spellbinding today as it was when it was all a mystery of the imagination; Biddlecombe, Beasley, Carberry etc, not mere mortal men of bad habits and flawed characters but princes of the turf, worthy of god-like status.
It is perhaps why Jonathan Powell’s book, published in 1991, and in need of a volume taking the reader up to the present day, was such a pleasing read. ‘Golden Days’. Cheltenham Gold Cup winners from Arkle to Garrison Savannah. Never was a book more aptly titled. Rarely, I think, was a book more lovingly compiled. You know the quality of the writer, his credentials for compiling such a history, when it becomes known to you that Pendil lived in retirement at the his expense, his responsibility.
And that is another element of the book I found satisfying; he did not finish each chapter with the bare bones of the result, where possible he gave an account of the life the winners lived in retirement. For instance, that tearaway The Dikler, a horse who stretched the arms of everyone who rode him, was ridden by the owner’s step-daughter in retirement, hunting, hunter trialling and even performing elegant dressage tests. Arthritis in his back led to his demise aged twenty-one. A book worth hunting down is ‘The Dikler and his Circle’, by Mary Comyns Carr, published in 1979 when the great horse was still hale and hearty.