The Boodles Gold Cup will celebrate its centenary next year but not since its inaugural running in 1924 – when Red Splash came in first – has it been won by a horse trained in Scotland.
Lucinda Russell can put the record straight today by triumphing with the mercurial Ahoy Senor.
Russell is perhaps the most successful Scottish jumps trainer ever, with one Grand National trophy and three Cheltenham Festival winners, including Corach Rambler, favourite to give her a second National next month.
This is an open, competitive Gold Cup and if any of the 13 runners were to triumph, you would not say it was a huge surprise.
There are three class acts on show, the Willie Mullins-trained Galopin Des Champs, last year’s winner A Plus Tard and the King George winner Bravemansgame.
Galopin Des Champs, which fell dramatically when clear in last year’s Turners Novices’ Chase, appears to do everything easily and it is hard to ignore the brilliance of his trainer, who ploughs on relentlessly towards 100 Festival winners.
He stayed in the Irish Gold Cup, his first attempt at three miles, but does he have too much pace in the speed-stamina equation required to win this?
How will he fare in a slogging match when stamina needs to trump speed?
If A Plus Tard turns up and puts the turbo on from the second-last like he did 12 months ago, he will take some stopping, but it will, surely, be one of Henry de Bromhead’s finest training achievements to have got him back to form.
His horses have been in tremendous form this week, and the nine-year-old is well capable of winning fresh, but you have to take it on trust that he has him back.
If the race was run at Kempton, Bravemansgame would doubtless be shorter priced, but he has never won on an undulating track, although his trainer, Paul Nicholls, ended a short Festival drought with Stage Star yesterday, so his confidence, at least, will be high.
There are others with strong claims. Noble Yeats, last year’s National winner, would join L’Escargot and Golden Miller in one of racing’s most select clubs, of horses to have completed the Aintree-Gold Cup double. He has not stopped improving since the penny dropped at Aintree last April.
The reapplication of cheekpieces will help jockey Seán Bowen, his trainer Emmet Mullins is a genius and he will be doing his best work at the finish.
Gordon Elliott’s Conflated has become something of a forgotten horse going into the race. There was nothing wrong with his Savills Chase win at Christmas and, at 16/1, he represents good value. His trainer is ticking along nicely at a winner a day so far.
Hewick, the horse bought by ‘Shark’ Hanlon as a yearling for €850, would represent one of the greatest rags-to-riches stories of all time, and the more the ground dries, the greater his chance.
Minella Indo, the winner two years ago and runner-up last year, is De Bromhead’s de facto second string but he grows a foot every time he arrives at Cheltenham and could very easily run himself into the money again.
Protektorat can be brilliant on his day but is more out than in, while Stattler, which won last year’s National Hunt Chase, a race that has become quite a reliable Gold Cup trial in recent years, will not be stopping and plenty will fancy him to reverse the Leopardstown form with his stablemate Galopin Des Champs over a tough three-and-a-quarter miles.
According to Peter Scudamore, Russell’s partner, Ahoy Senor would fit well into Ben Stokes’s cricket side.
“He’s not going to be 10 not out before lunch,” he said. “He’ll either be out for a duck or on 150 not out and wins the match.
“He’s beaten Bravemansgame, Protektorat and Noble Yeats. We’re going there with a chance but with our feet firmly on the ground.
“Galopin Des Champs could be the next Arkle but it is what happens from the third-last to the post. Maybe the favourite will not want those extra two furlongs.”
Runner-up here in the Brown Advisory Novices’ Chase, Ahoy Senor appears to blossom in the spring. He has echoes of the relentless 1995 winner Master Oats; even if he gets into a good rhythm, he will probably blunder his way through a couple, but if he is still in contention at the second-last, he can come home strongest.
Nicholls will perhaps never be as tense watching a race as he will be 40 minutes after the Gold Cup, when his daughter Olive (17) makes her Festival debut on Shantou Flyer in the amateur equivalent, the St James’s Place Hunters’ Chase. But Famous Clermont looks a class act in this and if he needs assistance from the saddle he will get it from Will Biddick. (© Telegraph Media Group Ltd, 2023)
Telegraph Media Group Limited [2023]