RACING:HE'S A champion on the slide but Kauto Star's appearance in the €160,000 Punchestown centrepiece today gives the festival crowd an opportunity to see possibly the best steeplechaser to race in this country since the legendary Arkle.
With 21 victories from 37 career starts, including a pair of Cheltenham Gold Cup triumphs and four King Georges, Kauto Star has already wracked up a CV to compare with almost anything in National Hunt history.
At his peak the respected authority, Timeform, rated only Arkle and Flyingbolt as his superior, ahead of other almost semi-mythical names such as Desert Orchid, Dawn Run and Captain Christy.
The evidence of three runs this season suggest an irrevocable downturn in performance which is hardly surprising for an 11-year-old veteran that ran six times as a three-year-old in his native France.
A second victory at Down Royal in November reads pretty well in form terms now, considering Sizing Europe was the runner-up, while Kauto Star bled after finishing third to Long Run in the King George.
A more forceful ride in the Gold Cup at Cheltenham provoked some brief moments of hope that the old magic might be back but even though he ultimately faded to third behind Long Run and Denman, Kauto Star was still gallant in defeat.
There were suggestions then that the blue-riband performance was a perfect cue to retire Paul Nicholls’s superstar but the British champion trainer has already stated he plans to train Kauto Star for next season, pulling the plug early on any sentimental notion that the horse would be pensioned off on the back of a victory.
Certainly today’s Guinness Gold Cup would have looked an ideal stage for such a scenario. Even a long way short of his best, the great horse looks much superior to seven opponents, and is still rated 11lb clear of his nearest rivals, Kempes and Nacarat, on the current handicap.
The latter is the other cross-channel hope and the spectacular, front-running grey secured a big race success over three miles at Liverpool on his last start when beating Carole’s Legacy and Follow The Plan who reopposes this afternoon.
However, it is hardly too presumptive that Kauto Star, even short of his very best, is capable of putting more than nine lengths between himself and a horse like Follow The Plan.
Kempes could be a different matter. JP McManus’s runner flopped in the Gold Cup but won the Hennessy well before that and will relish quick ground conditions. However, even the McManus camp seem to accept that Kauto Star may be too big an obstacle to surmount.
“Kauto Star has not run a bad race all season really and if he ran back to his usual kind of form, he would just have to turn up,” said MacManus’s racing manager, Frank Berry, yesterday.
Tranquil Sea and Rare Bob are previous Grade One winners at this festival but both disappointed on their last starts and it’s hard to escape the conclusion that this race is all about Kauto Star.
