Ruby Walsh celebrates winning the Cheltenham Gold Cup on Kauto Star. Photo credit: Charlesfred
The Cheltenham Festival, the most eagerly anticipated and most fiercely competitive event in the horse-racing calendar, started today. And, like always, the bookmakers are on top. In the Champion Hurdle, the big race of the opening day, odd-on favorite Hurricane Fly only managed third behind 11-1 winner Rock On Ruby and long-time race leader Overturn.
The undoubted highlight of the Cheltenham Festival is the Cheltenham Gold Cup, which takes place at 15.20 on Friday. This year, the main event is given added spice as superstar horse Kauto Star has come through an injury scare to be passed fit to attempt to win an extraordinary third Gold Cup in his sixth outing.
230,000 fans are expected to attend the Cheltenham Festival this year, reported The Times (£). An estimated £300 million will be gambled, reported The Telegraph.
A race meeting like no other. Writing at The Times (£), Alan Lee insisted that Cheltenham is “a race meeting like no other” to racing fans: “Royal Ascot may draw more posh frocks and Aintree stages the one race (the Grand National) each year that truly engages the entire country. Overseas, Australia genuinely stops for the Melbourne Cup and giddy riches are on offer in Dubai and Japan. All these meetings have their appeal but, in one vital sense, none holds a candle to the Festival. Only Cheltenham can engender obsessive curiosity over every one of its 27 races. Only Cheltenham can turn apparently sensible folk into wide-eyed sponges mopping up every snippet and nugget, be they inspired or insane.” Turning to the 2012 edition, Lee said the struggle between “giants” Paul Nicholls and Nicky Henderson, the top two trainers, “will be absorbing wallpaper to the week. Nicholls has strong chances, including Big Buck’s, but Henderson has more. The week starts with £375,000 between them in the trainers’ championship. It could look very different by Saturday.”
Trainer Nicky Henderson needs just two wins to surpass the record set by the great Fulke Walwyn of 40 at the Festival.
Extraordinarily tough Ruby Walsh: World’s greatest sportsman? James Lawton of The Independent identified “genius” jockey Ruby Walsh as the star of the Cheltenham show: “No contemporary sportsman, not Messi, Pacquaio or Djokovic, has done more … There are many ways to define the scale of this peculiar genius which underlines the point that no contemporary sportsman, not Lionel Messi in football, Manny Pacquaio in boxing or Novak Djokovic in tennis, has done more to announce the mastery of a particular discipline. That Walsh should do it in a sport which has wrecked his body several times over, and that for every triumph at the greatest jump meeting of them all – the tally is 32 going into today – he can point to some part of his frame which will always bear the mark or feel the pain of a collision with this and other courses.” Lawton reminded that, for Walsh, “the physical cost has been high even by the standards of his trade. He broke the same leg twice, the second time on the approach to his first Grand National victory on Papillon. He has dislocated and broken shoulders, cracked elbows and vertebrae and when, in 2008, he underwent emergency surgery for the removal of his spleen, he found a way back into the saddle in 27 days.” But it wasn’t just Walsh’s physical toughness that Lawton admired: “If Cheltenham is about nerve and judgment and the ability to understand the message of every equine heartbeat, Walsh has never been so separate in his extraordinary status as the supreme and separate performer.”
Ruby Walsh “does more than guarantee a supremely competitive ride. He offers more than mere accomplishment, even artistry. Supremely, he brings interpretation of every strength and weakness in the horse that is delivered to his care,” praised James Lawton of The Independent.
Kauto Star: The Muhammad Ali of racing. “Special K! Kauto can show he is the Ali of racing with Star comeback,” exclaimed an excited Marcus Townend at The Daily Mail. Kauto Star won the race in 2007 and 2009, making him the only horse to win back the crown. He could become the first horse to win it back twice, after falling and finishing third respectively in the last two years. “That would be a Muhammad Ali-style achievement from a gelding who has earned the right to be called one of the greats. The greatest ever? Who knows? That’s a call as impossible as comparing Lionel Messi with Pele.” Townend said that Kauto Star has a very good chance of completing a remarkable Gold Cup hat-trick: “This season’s two defeats of the younger rival Long Run, the defending champion trained by Henderson and ridden by Sam Waley-Cohen, have suggested that Kauto Star’s heart beats as vibrantly as ever.” But Townend reminded punters that “Cheltenham has taught us to expect the unexpected. Remember 2010. That was supposed to be ‘The Decider’ with the Gold Cup score standing at one-all with his now retired stablemate Denman. But it was Imperial Commander that claimed the crown as Kauto Star suffered a bone-crunching fall four fences from home … ”
Whip bans highly likely. At The Telegraph, Marcus Armytage predicted Cheltenham 2012 should be a blast but noted “clouds on the horizon? Well, the controversial whip rules, watered down for a third time last week, will be thoroughly road-tested by the end of the week.” Under the refreshed rules, jockeys are only allowed to hit a horse eight times but the stewards now have discretion to give them a little leeway if they go over the quota. “Jockeys have accepted the new rules but at Cheltenham,” noted Armytage, “where a lot of the visiting Irish jockeys have never had to ride within these guidelines and where winning is everything, don’t be surprised to see a few bans dished out.”
