the cheltenham gold cup.

​March 12th in 1924 fell on a Wednesday. It was the historic date for the inaugural running of the Cheltenham Gold Cup. The Cheltenham executive, under the chairmanship of Mr.F.H.Cathcart (the race that bore his name for so long is now the Ryanair. Too easy we forget the pioneers of our sport) were experimenting, in the same way as the present-day executive have experimented with the cross-country race and the mares hurdles.
We now accept without any other consideration that the Cheltenham Gold Cup is the race the majority of jockeys, trainers and owners of National Hunt horses would wish to win. In 1924 and for decades afterwards it was in fact a bit of a novelty steeplechase, a useful race to put the final touches of fitness on horses before a tilt at the race that really mattered, the Grand National at Aintree.
It's hard to believe that the thinking behind the Gold Cup was that National Hunt needed an equivalent steeplechase to the Ascot Gold Cup on the flat, which tells us how much flat racing has changed down the decades. Long distance flat races have acquired protected status in recent years to keep them alive while the Cheltenham Gold Cup has become the supreme race in the National Hunt calendar. Perhaps flat racing needs a 3 and a quarter mile conditions race to remind enthusiasts of the beginnings of their sport!
In 1924 there were only eighteen races in the whole National Hunt calendar worth more than £500 to the winner and only two worth more than £2,000, the National Hunt Chase, what we now term the 4-miler, an amateur race then as it remains today, and the Lancashire Chase, the race I suspect that has metamorphized into the Betfair, which carried a value to the winner of £1,780. In 1924 the Cheltenham Gold Cup carried the grand total of £685 to the winner and was seriously out-ranked as the main race of the meeting by the amateur-riders 4-mile maiden chase, which it remained until comparatively recently. Somewhere in the calendar the 4-mile maiden chase should be revived, just for old times’ sake.
At the time of the inauguration of the Cheltenham Gold Cup conditions races were as rare as hen’s teeth and its first running was not exactly a level weights contest as the weights were set at 12st and 11st 5lbs for five-year-old. Proving that novelty will always prove popular the race had a healthy compliment of runners from the get-go, with Red Splash, a five-year-old carrying 11st 5lbs winning by a head and a neck from Conjuror and Gerald L, both carrying 12st.
At the time National Hunt racing desperately needed a spectacle, a race to savour as the Grand National was virtually the sole reason for anyone to own chasers, train chasers or to ride them. Aintree completely dwarfed the rest of the season. It was, and remains, National Hunt’s biggest attraction, yet the best chasers rarely won the race. It was a hard task for any horse just to finish the race. Even when Golden Miller won in 1934, giving him the legendary accolade of being the only horse to win both the Gold Cup and the Grand National in the same year, the exertion was so imprinted on his mind, even though he won two more Gold Cups, he began to hate the big black fences and the greatest steeplechaser of his era could not be cajoled to put his best foot forward, making his views plain on his final visit by refusing.
It was only in the early 1950’s when the Cheltenham Gold Cup became a race distinct in name and prestige, when the winners were rarely asked to attempt the Gold Cup/Grand National double. I will venture to say that no horse competing in this year’s renewal of the race will be asked to run at Aintree.
This year’s race? Even before Cheltenham last year I tipped Presenting Percy as this year’s winner. I have got cold feet just recently about him, though now it seems he’ll get his ground so at least he will be running. Back on Boxing Day the idea came to me that come March Thistlecrack would finish in front of Clan Des Obeaux and as the King George winner has undoubtedly been the most impressive chaser of the season so far I am staying loyal to the Boxing Day impression and suggest Tom Scudamore will achieve what his grandfather achieved and his father did not by winning the Cheltenham Gold Cup.
But if Presenting Percy wins I will claim it as a moral victory as I honestly tipped him, look through the archive, to win this year’s Gold Cup before he even ran in the R.S.A.