4 fantastic Festivals
Nick Pulford looks at four vintage Cheltenham years
30 years ago Charter gets the party started
1988who DAVID NICHOLSON,
enjoyed so many big-race successes as a jockey and trainer, was in no doubt about the significance of Charter Party’s role in his long and illustrious career. “I consider winning a Gold Cup with Charter Party was my best training performance. He was a very talented and very brave horse, but also a very unsound one,” he said.
Nicholson, who had 17 winners at the Festival as a trainer, nursed Charter Party (pictured) through an injury-plagued career punctuated by brilliance. Only two years earlier Nicholson had broken his duck at the Festival after a long wait, with Charter Party winning the race that is now the Ultima Handicap Chase as part of a final-day double.
Partnered by Richard Dunwoody – like Nicholson enjoying his only Gold Cup success – Charter Party was engaged in a two-horse race with Cavvies Clown from the third-last. At the penultimate fence, a mistake from his rival allowed Charter Party to seize control and he galloped clear to win by six lengths.
Fred Winter, one of the all-time greats as a rider and trainer, had a poignant triumph in the Champion Hurdle with Celtic Shot, ridden by his stable jockey Peter Scudamore. The 7-1 shot won by four lengths in a bumper field of 21.
This was a fourth Champion Hurdle win for Winter after Bula (1971 and 1972) and Lanzarote (1974), and turned out to be the last of his 28 winners as a trainer at the Festival.
For Scudamore, this was the first of two Champion Hurdle wins, and he still holds it dear. “Whenever I see Charlie we still talk about those times,” he says. “We both feel it was a great honour to be representing one of the great National Hunt figures of all time. You always felt slightly in awe of Fred and everything he’d achieved, and winning that race meant a lot.”
Winter is the only person to have won the Champion Hurdle, Cheltenham Gold Cup and Grand National as jockey and trainer, and his achievements are remembered in the name of the Fred Winter Juvenile Handicap Hurdle.
Desert Orchid’s place in the Cheltenham Hall of Fame lay ahead, but for now he had to settle for another bit part at the Festival as he was beaten by Pearlyman in the Queen Mother Champion Chase for the second year running.
Two of the best Flat trainers wrote their names on the roll of honour.
Michael Stoute took the Triumph Hurdle with Sheikh Mohammed’s Kribensis, who went on to claim the Champion Hurdle two years later, and Guy Harwood won the Supreme Novices’ Hurdle with Vagador.
The only Irish success came in the Stayers’ Hurdle with Galmoy, flying the flag alone for the second year running.
Oliver Sherwood enjoyed a big double on the second day with Rebel Song (Sun Alliance Hurdle) and The West Awake (Sun Alliance Chase), and another notable winner was trainer Josh Gifford, who ended a long wait for his breakthrough at the meeting when Golden Minstrel took the Kim Muir Chase and quickly took his score to three with Vodkatini (Grand Annual) and Pragada (Coral Golden Hurdle Final).