Crown jewels go to those prepared to tear up script
2017many MORE than ever, with so
big prizes on offer at the Festival, part of the trainer’s art is selecting the right target for each individual. Sometimes that involves tearing up a prepared script or being brave enough to take on a big favourite, and never was that better illustrated than at last year’s meeting.
In mid-January, two months before the most important four days in the Jump racing calendar, Buveur D’Air was a novice chaser, Sizing John was being tried over a distance as far as two and a half miles for only the second time in his career, Special Tiara’s trainer Henry de Bromhead was weighing up whether to swerve Douvan, and Nichols Canyon was being prepared for the Irish Champion Hurdle.
Yet that quartet mopped up the Festival’s crown jewels after some radical shifts in position. Sizing John had been to the Festival twice before as a two-miler, being placed behind Douvan as both a novice hurdler and a novice chaser, but he was reinvented as a staying chaser by Jessica Harrington, who guided him to glory in the Timico Cheltenham Gold Cup.
Harrington’s seven-year-old was sent off 7-1 fourth favourite in a field of 13 but showed he had an irresistible package of stamina, brilliant jumping and, crucially, the speed he had demonstrated previously over two miles. Given an excellent ride by Robbie Power, he scored impressively by two and three-quarter lengths from the staying-on Minella Rocco.
Remarkably, this was a first attempt at the Gold Cup for Power and Harrington.
Nicky Henderson has achieved almost everything in Jump racing and the Lambourn maestro reached another milestone when he took the outright record in the Stan James Champion Hurdle with a sixth victory courtesy of Buveur D’Air, who won two novice chases before being switched back to hurdling as late as February. Noel Fehily, Buveur D’Air’s rider, secured a notable double when he took the Betway Queen Mother Champion Chase aboard Special Tiara, making him only the second jockey to win both races at the same meeting. Douvan, the 2-9 favourite, trailed in seventh for his first defeat over fences, and Special Tiara kept on gamely to score by a head from Fox Norton.
For Fehily, a first Champion Chase success was sweet. “I remember seeing horses like Viking Flagship when I was growing up and it’s a race I really wanted to win,” he says. “I think if you asked any jockey they’d probably say it’s the race that gives you the biggest buzz. There’s no room for error – it’s a test of speed, they have to stay and jump. It’s a great race to watch and to ride in.” Nichols Canyon, like Sizing John, was sent up in distance at the Festival, having fallen in the Irish Champion Hurdle, and it proved the right decision by Willie Mullins as he took the Sun Bets Stayers’ Hurdle in a thrilling battle with Lil Rockerfeller and odds-on favourite Unowhatimeanharry.
Ruby Walsh, Nichols Canyon’s jockey, enjoyed a record-breaking Thursday, becoming the first to ride four winners in a single day at the Festival. The others were Yorkhill (JLT Novices’ Chase), Un De Sceaux (Ryanair Chase) and Let’s Dance (Trull House Stud Mares’ Novices’ Hurdle) and those four winners were enough to make Walsh leading rider for the fifth year in a row and the 11th in all.
There was a new name on the leading trainer trophy as Gordon Elliott pipped Mullins. Elliott led 5-0 after day two but Mullins responded magnificently and tied the scores at 6-6. On countback, Elliott’s three second places (to Mullins’ two) put him on top.