RACING:FEW RACES provoke more sentiment than the Gold Cup but worryingly for followers of Kauto Star and Denman, steeplechasing's blue-riband doesn't usually reward veteran champions hoping for a final hurrah.
Admittedly, in Kauto Star especially, we are talking about one of the most exceptional horses in decades, a horse whose 2009 Gold Cup triumph is rated by many as the best performance seen in the race since Arkle. But the hard and unyielding evidence of the formbook suggests the Paul Nicholls-trained champion has been in decline since the 2009 King George and Cheltenham is no place for an old-stager on the slide.
Only seven horses aged 11 or 12 have won the Gold Cup since it was first run in 1924. Mandarin was the last 11-year-old to manage it and that was 49 years ago. But there is more to it than statistics.
Racing is no different to any athletic activity in that absolute peak performance is desperately fleeting. No tricks can protect ageing limbs from being found out on the racecourse. The legendary Golden Miller ran up five Gold Cups in a row but he was only nine years old for the fifth, and still nowhere near as good as he was in his absolute pomp.
During the second World War Prince Regent was Ireland’s outstanding steeplechaser but was denied the chance to prove his Gold Cup credentials until 1946 when he was all of 11 years old and past his best.
More recent Cheltenham history is littered with the names of great champions who went to the well once too often. Foot and mouth cruelly robbed Istabraq of a Champion Hurdle four-in-a-row in 2001. By the time he showed up in 2002 he only made it to the second flight before being pulled up. Remarkably he started a 2 to 1 favourite.That can be the danger of allowing sentiment to cloud judgement.
Moscow Flyer is another legendary name who five years ago arrived at the Champion Chase just a year after perhaps his best-ever winning performance here. But that one year was vital. Moscow Flyer never looked remotely the same in his final season, failed to win and struggled home in fifth behind Newmill before being immediately retired.
Kauto Star and Denman are still extremely high-class chasers and the Nicholls team’s achievement in getting both of them back to the Gold Cup is considerable. And while their absolute best may be in the past, making definitive statements that they are too old to win have the potential to bite back.
Kauto Star is often compared to Desert Orchid and while the great grey managed just a single Gold Cup triumph in 1989, he also overcame an aversion to Cheltenham a couple of years later to run a fine third in the Gold Cup at a venerable 12 years of age. If either of the old-stagers can beat back father time and again assume centre-stage on Gold Cup day, they will return to the winner’s enclosure on a venerable river of sentiment.
