A Champs no more as 70,000 Cheltenham shoulders slump in unison after Gold Cup upset
CHANGING OF THE GUARD: Inothewayurthinkin and Mark Walsh win the Boodles Cheltenham Gold Cup Chase (Grade 1) from Galopin Des Champs. Pic: Healy Racing Photo
History made, and history lost.
Inothewayurthinkin has entered the annals. There is no such thing as a bad Gold Cup winner and Willie Mullins himself made a point of stressing that Galopin Des Champs had been beaten by a good horse but, well, jeez. C’mon, you know?
"It was like ‘Who shot Bambi’,” said someone. That about summed it up.
Almost 70,000 shoulders slumped in unison as they watched the pre-race favourite slip inexorably behind Gavin Cromwell’s eventual winner. As losses go, it was like that hairy old line about bankruptcy happening slowly at first and then all at once.
In the blink of an eye, a race for the ages constricted to just being the biggest of the year.
Mullins had been here before, in 2021, when Al Boum Photo’s bid to join a club of three-time Gold Cup winners restricted to Golden Miller, Cottage Rake, Arkle and Best Mate faltered when finishing third to Minella Indo.
But Al Boum Photo didn’t have the hold on the racing public’s imagination in the way Galopin Des Champs has done. The owner Audrey Turley had said before the race that her lad was a “superstar” regardless of the end result. That’s true, but people had been desperate to be here when he went supernova.
There was a point earlier in the running, maybe two-thirds of the way through, when Ahoy Senor’s zany jumping finally resulted in what appeared to be an inevitable fall and Galopin and Paul Townend were forced wide to avoid the mess.
It looked then as if this just wasn’t to be the day for a horse who had twice impressed at Leopardstown in recent outings, but Mullins, the winner that he is, was thinking differently. He wasn’t quite ready there and then to let go of the dream.
“I was hoping that might wake him up because I thought he was idle. I just felt when he jumped off he was only in seventh place," said the trainer. "He was jumping too big. He wasn’t jumping well enough. So I was hoping something would get beside him and make him jump.
“But, to me, he wasn’t racing. The only time he got competitive was when coming around the fourth last at the top of the hill and then it looked alright. But I think he had just used up too much of his powder jumping too big but a good horse won it.”
You didn’t have to be the Closutton Midas to know that Galopin wasn’t hitting his markers from the starter’s gun. Mullins himself was able to see beyond the visual cues and understand that the nine-year old just wasn’t comfortable.
But it was too early, as the winner was making its way up to the ring, to put even his finger on it. Maybe the drying ground didn’t suit, he thought, although it wasn’t a theory delivered with any great conviction. There will be time to think deeper about it. And longer.
And it had all been going so, so well. Ridiculously well.
Mullins had started the day as leading trainer with six wins already in the bag, and then knocked off the first four races of this last day with Poniros, Kargese, Dinoblue and Jasmin De Vaux to equal his own record of ten successes in the one week.
Townend pushed his own lead at the top of the jockey’s ladder out by piloting the second and fourth of those – and flying off Allegorie De Vassy in the Mares’ Steeple Chase in between – but this is a game that will never be beholden to expectation.
Of the week’s four feature races, only Thursday’s Ryanair Chase delivered a win for the favourite, Mullins’ Fact To File winning at its ease. Think of Constitution Hill falling on Tuesday. And Jonbon beaten in to second the day after. Making history is hard.
“I was never really confident on him,” said Townend, denied sole possession of a record fifth Gold Cup in the saddle. “Maybe the ground was a bit quicker than it has been over the years. I’m not making excuses. We were beaten on the day by a better, younger one.
“Everything was a bit laboured on him, but he’s tried his heart out. He doesn’t owe us anything and he’s in one piece. He just wasn’t happy, I think. Everything was a bit of an effort. He still gave it a crack, didn’t he?
“We’re second in the Gold Cup, anyway. I was happiest the couple of jumps back up the hill the last time round, but I was hoping rather than being confident that he was going to come alive for me there, to be honest.”
