Diamond Geezer
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Whether or not you agree with these they make good reading
From Irish Independent
Among the great races and the crowning of new champions, it has been a little sad to have watched the coverage of the Cheltenham Festival and have to write the obituary for Channel Four Racing. At least the Channel Four Racing we used to know and love. Once it was bright, authoritative and ground-breaking, setting the standard for its rivals. Alas, it has become a pale shadow of its former self.
It does have most of the elements of what made it great. Alastair Down can sometimes veer towards over-sentimentality but hasn't lost the knack of capturing the great moments with the gravitas they require. Simon Holt is a fine race-caller. Ted Walsh gives as good value as ever and although, like Giles and Dunphy, they seem to have been around for ever, John Francome and Jim McGrath still lend the coverage an expert touch.
You can still forgive them their foibles. John McCririck may be a misogynistic, offensive bore but he's no worse than he was a decade ago and as soon as you see Derek Thompson heading towards a raucous crowd of drinkers with a microphone in his hand and an unctuous grin on his face you know it is the cue to take care of some business outside of the television room.
Other lapses were simply unforgivable, though. When a day's racing is lost because of risk to corporate clients you understand the Festival isn't purely about racing anymore, but to see Channel Four succumb to the fashion virus was particularly dispiriting. You only have to watch The Morning Line any Saturday to realise how ready the station is to dumb down its racing coverage, but this was a new low. Surely it's only a matter of time now before top hats and tails become obligatory in the winners' enclosure.
There were errors during the week; missed links, wrong race results, but on an occasion of this magnitude all of that was understandable. On Tuesday, however, Channel Four went for a commercial break and when they returned the field had already set off for the Arkle Chase. In racing coverage there is no greater sin. The fact that the station would even consider scheduling a break at such a delicate time was proof, if you needed it, that as far as racing is concerned, Channel Four has effectively dropped its reins.
Thankfully, we weren't without alternatives. Subscription channels often get a bad rap but the Cheltenham coverage on Racing UK was as faultless as you can get. There was a particularly entertaining interview with Denman's half-owner Harry Findlay to whet the appetite. Mostly though, it was just basic stuff: detailed pre-race discussions, then the race followed by an in-depth re-run and extensive analysis to see where your money went. And not a two-tone hat or floral pattern in sight.
It was all so simple and unfussy and, in its understated way, so utterly revolutionary.
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By Johnny Ward
Sunday March 16 2008
'I've been to The Nam," a battle-worn Irishman is reputed to have proclaimed on stepping off a plane one time. "Chelte-nham."
After just one day in the Cotswolds last week, I knew how he felt, as did many others. On the opening day, the bookies certainly won the battle, and by the end of the week it was safe enough to say that they'd won the war as well.
This is no ordinary time of year, as evidenced by men clinging to the Racing Post last Tuesday as they strode with purpose through departures at Dublin Airport. It is not yet 6am -- yet others have already started testing the black stuff in the bar.
Only kids have any zest for the day at this hour of the morning, I thought. On the plane to Bristol, the nattering and laughter does not cease for the duration of the flight.
I'd backed Harchibald -- who hates soft ground -- antepost for the Champion Hurdle and the grey skies reflect my mood as I enjoy a lift to Cheltenham in the car of fledgling Irish trainer James Barrett and his wife, Orla. She drives as her husband reads the Racing Post and directions.
I walk to the track with two hours to spare and the sun is baking my back. Yet half-an-hour later, a torrential shower that lasts about 20 minutes has effectively sealed Harchi's fate. It was all very frustrating, as the ground had been watered extensively the week before and was now too soft for a considerable number of fancied horses.
The day starts with the Supreme Novices' Hurdle. My antepost ally here, Sophocles, is available at twice the price on the track than the one at which I've backed him -- not good at all. He is one of the first beaten.
One down, 24 to go. As they go down to the start for the Arkle, I seek the solace of a cigarette -- it is surely no coincidence that one smokes much more regularly than normal at the races. When I return, my 11/1 fancy Clopf is going quite well; sadly, he has already ditched Andrew McNamara. At least Sophocles got around.
A more senior Sunday Independent colleague has backed Clopf and gets a sense of foreboding that will prove an accurate template for the remainder of the week. I meet him later, again in the See You Then Bar. He is sipping coffee incongruously, as Guinness-stained plastic cups mount on every table.
The Champion Hurdle proves a total shambles. Patriotism and betting on horses are uncomfortable bedfellows; nevertheless, that is the way most Irish are thinking. You really begin to question things when, having felt quite certain that an Irish horse would win the Champion, it turns out that English ones fill the first three.
Katchit is a gutsy little terrier but I have never really warmed to him, and it is sad to see Harchibald flounder and Sizing Europe go from probable winner to probable non-finisher in a matter of strides. By now, the skies are a dark shade of grey.
It gets no better in the William Hill Trophy. I pluck for a David Pipe horse, and he wins -- the trainer, rather than the horse. My selection, Abragante, wouldn't win a walkover on one of his many off-days, but the more straightforward An Accordion is well worth his victory. The Irish have plundered one of the first four.
Garde Champetre saves me somewhat in the Cross Country, and from talking to others it seems Nina Carberry is a general saviour today. Many marvel about her brilliance, but this is hardly something that was revealed today.
There are 22 horses running in the last, but 20 of them are irrelevant. I know it's a two-horse race, the bookies know it and so do the punters: only Ashkazar and River Liane seem to be attracting money.
Having punted the latter at 33/1 -- he goes off 11/4 -- I am justified in a feeling of excitement. I holler wildly as Davy Russell's mount jumps superbly three out to almost dispute the lead. At the next hurdle, he gets it all wrong and is shuffled back to about tenth. My handicap certainty finishes with more ahead of him than behind him, and his litany of backers are at a total loss to explain.
You look forward to Cheltenham for months, yet the course of three hours or so can leave you feeling very deflated. A scatter of pints would solve that, of course, and it would transpire that officials would afford us an extra day to recover.
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Eddie Freemantle in Observer
Anticipation often leads to disappointment, but this year's Cheltenham Festival delivered all that it promised, and more, with the highlight of 25 fine races the one we had all been waiting for. The Gold Cup was won in inimitable style by Denman, leading home a memorable one-two-three for the stable of Paul Nicholls, with former champion Kauto Star in second and Neptune Collonges third.
If Nicholls' effort did not quite match Michael Dickinson's famous five of 1983, it was not far off and Denman's victory has every right to sit with the best remembered, the likes of Arkle, Dawn Run, Desert Orchid and Best Mate.
Indeed, the race lived up to its billing as a modern-day Arkle v Mill House and, just as then, the underdog was to come out on top. Not that Denman, with immense raw-boned power contained within his huge frame, looked like an underdog. In the paddock, he towered like a Goliath.
From the moment Sam Thomas took him to the front with a circuit to go, there was a sense that the giant liver chestnut would stay there. Bravely, Neptune Collonges and Mick Fitzgerald tried to stay in touch as Denman motored on relentlessly. Then there was the realisation from those who had made Kauto Star odds-on to retain his crown that he was not going to do so. His jumping lacked fluency and his sparkle was dimmed. Perhaps it was the sticky ground, but much more likely was that his stamina was not there for this biggest of all tests.
But, like a true champion, Kauto Star put himself through the pain barrier to overhaul Neptune Collonges in the home straight and answer Ruby Walsh's urgings to hold the grey's rally for second place. Though the winning margin was seven lengths, this was not a victory gained without effort and Denman looked tired as he wandered slightly in the last few yards, although his achievement in cold figures was one of the best in history
Neptune Collonges' owner, John Hales, did not look like a man who was contemplating what might have been - had the other pair from his horse's stable not been around - as he led in his grey with a grin as wide as Cleeve Hill. Hales, who had insisted that Fitzgerald take over from Liam Heard in the saddle, had realised that his horse had played a part in one of the great Cheltenham races. You had to feel sorry for Heard that he had no involvement, but Fitzgerald helped ensure that Neptune Collonges was well clear of a host of top-notch animals.
The fourth, Halcon Genelardais, had been beaten by inches in the Welsh National with 11st 12lb on his back; the fifth, Exotic Dancer, was finishing out of the first three for the first time in 12 starts; the sixth, Knowhere, had beaten Thursday's Ryanair winner Our Vic at Cheltenham last time; and the last to finish, more than 113 lengths behind Denman, Afistfullofdollars, was supplemented after beating 2005 Grand National hero and 2006 Gold Cup runner-up Hedgehunter at Fairyhouse.
As Nicholls looked almost shocked by what he and his team had achieved, Kauto Star's owner Clive Smith took defeat on the chin. Nicholls' landlord, the dairy farmer Paul Barber, who owns Denman with professional gambler Harry Findlay, was as understated as Findlay is overstated, but proud he had won a second Gold Cup to go with that of See More Business.
Findlay, briefly lost for words, then launched forth, talking of 'the secret club of half a dozen people' - founder members Barber and Findlay - who 'knew' that Denman would eventually scale these heights, a belief that formed after Denman beat Karanja by 16 lengths despite nearly running off the course in a novices' hurdle at Wincanton in November 2005. Since then, the big horse has been beaten only once, in the SunAlliance Hurdle of 2006. Findlay maintains that, even in that sole defeat, Denman showed his battling qualities and that ever since he has had an indomitable will to win that breaks other horses.
That 'club', says Findlay, included Walsh, who had had to make the choice between Denman and Kauto Star. How many, given that dilemma, would not have opted for the reigning champion? And this second place helped Walsh to the consolation of the prize for jockey of the Festival, beating Robert Thornton. Both won three races, as did Nicholls and Thornton's principal boss, Alan King.
Another of Nicholls' wins came in Thursday's Queen Mother Champion Chase when Master Minded put up a performance considered better than Denman's in the opinion of the official handicapper, Phil Smith. Master Minded jumped brilliantly and hammered last year's winner, Voy Por Ustedes, by 19 lengths. The runner-up always does his best and Master Minded, only five years old, had old-timers comparing him to Flyingbolt and the middle-aged to Badsworth Boy. Even the more recent Moscow Flyer never looked as good as this.
Inglis Drever does not win like Master Minded. He grinds and grinds his rivals down. Kasbah Bliss and Kazal looked as though they were going to beat him in the World Hurdle, but Inglis Drever kept finding more to edge out the French challenger under Denis O'Regan, a jockey both powerful and stylish. That gave Drever an unprecedented third World Hurdle at the age of nine, old for a hurdler these days, and his jockey, trainer Howard Johnson and owner Graham Wylie a second prize to add to Tidal Bay's Tuesday Arkle romp.
The Champion Chase was meant to be run on Wednesday, but high winds had caused some damage to facilities at the racecourse. Conditions were considered too dangerous and just about the only people pleased were pub landlords.
The Plough next to Jonjo O'Neill's yard and the Hollow Bottom near Nigel Twiston-Davies' were packed to the gunnels, with several owners, trainers and jockeys letting their hair down before a 10-race rejigged card on Thursday.
At the Hollow Bottom, Irish trainer Tony Martin had stepped outside to make a call. It was hard to know whether he was conducting a postmortem into first-day defeats of fancied Wonderkid and Patsy Hall or making plans for later runners Robin Du Bois and Psycho. In any event, Martin was to go home empty-handed, with Paul Carberry doing an imitation of a mounted policeman on Psycho in the County Hurdle. Getting going too late, Psycho was beaten by Silver Jaro, under a far more proactive ride from Noel Fehily.
There were plenty who finished out of the money who will win good races. Unfortunately, the performance of Silver Charmer, sixth in the new David Nicholson Mares Hurdle, will mean she is likely to go up a few pounds in the handicap, but she looked in need of this run.
Amateur rider Rose Davidson was unable to use her 5lb claim on Middleton Dene in the Spa Hurdle, but her mount gave her a great ride to finish sixth. Middleton Dene, best on a left-handed course, should be winning soon.
Ashkazar, caught on the run-in by Crack Away Jack in Tuesday's Fred Winter, had to race into the teeth of the gale up the hill, while the winner had more cover. He looks ideal for Aintree. Perhaps, like Denman in that SunAlliance, Ashkazar will find strength in defeat.
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Brough Scott in The Telegraph
Denman's whole life had led to this. He would set off to attack round Cheltenham's great anvil of dreams and gallop and jump until the best horse in the world was battered into submission behind him. It was what he had been bred and trained and raced for. It would be two circuits, 22 fences and 6mins 47secs of fulfilment on the hoof.
To be exact, the big attack did not come until they started the second circuit. Until then Denman had been tracking the grey Neptune Collonges whilst Kauto Star kept track along the inside about four lengths away. Until then you could not spot a chink in the defending champion. Some of us thought he looked a touch tight, his skin dull in the paddock, but maybe that was more our nerves than his. Then, just as Sam Thomas decided to play Denman from the front, Ruby Walsh had a problem. At the 11th fence, the second-last on the final circuit, Kauto galloped in and clouted it.
This happens. But you don't want it to happen too often. They came thundering towards us at the 12th, the final fence in this Gold Cup next time. When he had approached it for the first time, the second jump of the race, Kauto Star had put in such a huge spring-heeled leap that he landed almost too steeply. This time he didn't. Kauto galloped in again and clouted it.
It wasn't dangerous, like it used to be a year ago. But he had missed it. Walsh has a poker player's stillness about him, but he now knew his hand wasn't perfect.
Not that he betrayed anything down the back stretch. Denman was piling it on up ahead of Neptune Collonges, the lesser horses were already being driven. But Kauto was neat enough. It didn't matter that he was still five lengths adrift at the 17th, the last open ditch. But it did at the 18th at the top of the hill, for he galloped in and clouted hard again. Denman was launching off down the hill and Walsh had the stick up. Kauto was in trouble.
advertisementThere was no mistaking it. The champion had taken the equivalent of a knock-down. He was on his feet but the contender was pummelling him. Kauto got good jumps at the 19th and 20th but he couldn't even take Neptune Collonges. There was a roar from the crowd as Denman's name was called, but also a strange muted feel. For Kauto this was not going to be just defeat, but humiliation. Yet he had not become a 15-victory, six-season champion without being a battler.
The game looked up as Thomas thundered round the last turn for those final two fences with an ever widening gap behind him. But Walsh dug deep as he drove Kauto up the inside to that penultimate fence and the horse's long white blaze came up with a mighty leap to finally take second. As Denman came towards us, the roll of his forelegs showed the strain was biting. If he was to blunder and Kauto could get another big jump there was just a chance of the equivalent of a last-round knock-out.
But Denman kept his rhythm. He landed weary but running. Kauto drove in but clouted, and as he came away from the fence he staggered slightly sideways. You should always look at the forelegs. Denman's were no longer moving easily but at least they were rolling. Kauto's had lost their bite. It was over. Afterwards the mind was in a muddle. Denman was the new champion. Thomas well deserved his arm-punching elation. The ownership 'Odd Couple' of Paul Barber and Harry Findlay had their belief fully vindicated and Paul Nicholls' achievement of training the first three home recalled the 1983 Famous Five of Michael Dickinson. Yet this had not been Arkle/Mill House after all. That cold clear day in 1964, both sets of supporters could still believe as they swung for home and then Arkle changed it all. Here the champion had been in trouble too early. We can't be really sure until the re-match.
With this bizarre, stable-companions, all-good-friends, no-edge rivalry, there was no chance of one of those wound-licking 'I will follow him to the end of the earth and then I will beat him' declarations which Jimmy Connors would say after another defeat by Bjorn Borg. But it seemed important to walk back to the wash-down with the loser.
Sonja Warburton has been Kauto Star's closest companion. "The most important thing is that they are all home safely," she said patting her horse's sweat-soaked neck. "But I think the ground was a bit sticky for him. For me he is still a champion."
The small knot of fans broke into spontaneous, sympathetic applause as she led Kauto out into the ring after his wash-over. They did the same in more cheery mode when lofty, grey-suited young Harry Fry came up with Denman. Away in the paddock you could hear the loudspeaker calling Jess Allen to the podium as groom to the winner. The two horses circled together with the familiarity of the stablemates they are. Kauto Star still tall and grand, Denman even bigger, but that low chestnut neck making him look slightly less than the 17 hands that he is.
Eventually Allen came up to join us. She will become a mother in the summer. "I could feel the baby kicking on the run-in," she said. But even that wide-eyed wonder could not stem thoughts of her four-legged hero.
"Yesterday morning," she said, "I put my hand on the bottom of his neck and for the first time ever it was just one slab of muscle. Paul asked me how he was. I said he had never been fitter."
The two horses were led off to share a box home to Somerset. They don't look as if they argue but we have to hope the debate is not over. Seven lengths was the verdict. It was decisive but not necessarily final. Next March, let's hope it's not only the daffodils that are blooming.
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From The Times
Paul Nicholls is a serious man, ambitious, driven, and if ever he has stopped to smell the flowers, he has done so in the privacy of his own garden. He is a trainer to be respected, not one that invites or seeks affection. But let there be no mistaking what we saw unfold in the Cotswolds on Friday afternoon for it was a magnificent feat of horse training and a quite brilliant piece of management.
To enter three horses in the Gold Cup and have them finish first, second and third is immensely impressive but 25 years ago, Michael Dickinson went two better than that. What elevates Nicholls’s achievement was the way he managed the challenge of two star horses that needed different tactics and owners who had to believe their horses were fairly treated. This was no simple task because the starting point was a conflict of interest: by doing everything he could to ensure that Denman might win the Gold Cup, Nicholls had to make tactical decisions that lessened Kauto Star’s chances of winning a second consecutive Gold Cup. How did he square that with Clive Smith, Kauto Star’s owner? To Nicholls, the equine dilemmas would have been simpler than their human equivalents.
There were subtleties for which there were no easy solutions. Denman is owned by Paul Barber and Harry Findlay, and because it was Barber who set up Nicholls as a trainer on his farm at Ditcheat in Somerset, their relationship is usually close. At one level, Barber is landlord and Nicholls is tenant. At another, it is personal and the older man, Barber, has clearly had an almost paternal influence on Nicholls’s career.
It would be hard to be another owner in Nicholls’s yard and not fear that however high you figured in the trainer’s pecking order, you would still find yourself beneath Barber. Smith once had his team of horses trained by Martin Pipe but switched to Nicholls partly because he felt Pipe’s first allegiance would always be to his biggest owner, David Johnson. Nicholls is a clever man and saw the potential for conflict once Denman asserted himself as a genuine challenger to Kauto Star’s position of eminence. From that point, Nicholls has played the most thoughtful game.
Related Links
Denman refuses to be drawn into battle with show of strength
Denman vs Kauto Star: Andrew Longmore's verdict
Findlay cashes in after letting his horse do talking
Plotting alternative paths to the Gold Cup for his two famous chasers was not difficult and he ensured both had the kind of confidence-boosting victories horses need before a big race. Once it became clear both would be in the Gold Cup, Nicholls’s intelligence became more apparent by the day.
The first decision was which horse the stable’s No 1 jockey Ruby Walsh would ride. Given the importance of that decision, the easy thing for the trainer was to stay neutral, but he suggested to Walsh that he should stick with Kauto Star, the horse who gave him his first Gold Cup winner. Walsh would almost certainly have chosen to partner Kauto Star in any case, but it would have been reassuring for the horse’s owner to know the trainer agreed with the jockey’s decision.
When asked in January and February how he thought the Gold Cup would unfold, Nicholls offered us endless neutrality. Two great horses, who knows? Then in the final 10 days, there was a shift and he spoke often about his belief in Kauto Star and how he rated him the best horse he had trained.
On the morning of the race, he spoke passionately about his belief in last season’s champion: “I’ve been convinced for well over a year that Kauto Star is not only the best horse I’ve ever had, but the best I am ever likely to train, so I still can’t bring myself to believe the horse in the box next door to him is going to turn out even better than the champion. But I simply don’t know, and that’s the fascinating thing about their epic clash.”
It was almost like he talked up Kauto Star to deflect attention from the fact that he and Denman’s owners were meticulously planning a tactical race to beat the champion. For there is no doubt that is what they did and what they were entitled to do, however hard that was going to be for Smith.
Central to the strategy was Nicholls’s third runner, the sev-en-year-old Neptune Collonges. A good-looking grey, he is a fine chaser who does best in races that play to his boundless stamina. It suits him to set the pace and his role in the Gold Cup was clearly defined, to lead the race through the first circuit and at a pace that would stretch those behind him.
Nicholls does not leave things to chance. Liam Heard, a good but inexperienced jockey, had been expected to ride Neptune Collonges but there was a fear he would go too quick. A few days before the race, the trainer switched to the masterful horseman Mick Fitzgerald, a superb judge of pace. Fitzgerald did his job perfectly and when Sam Thomas and Denman jumped past him at the fence in front of the stands after a circuit, there was a sense of watching a race-plan of military precision unfold in front of you. Thomas gradually wound up the pace and because he is young and brave, he was always going to err on the side of a murderous pace.
And that is what he set. Walsh had not been that comfortable on Kauto Star through the first circuit, although at the pace set by Neptune Collonges, his horse’s jumping was fine. Once Denman got onto the back straight and Thomas increased the tempo, Kauto Star’s jumping disintegrated. He hit the top of one fence, then another, and another � and unless something unforeseen happened, the game was up for the champion.
In his determination to find a chink in Kauto Star’s stamina, Thomas probably asked Denman to do too much too soon but it was not a mistake, rather the exuberance of youth and the jockey’s fear that any lessening of the pace would play into his chief rival’s hands.
There will be many memories from the race, and perhaps the greatest will be of how the two protagonists jumped. Because Denman was racing six to 10 lengths in front of Kauto Star for much of the 3Ämile journey, we could watch his jumping and then watch Kauto Star’s. The difference was significant and, in some respects, the surprise lay in the fact that just seven lengths separated the horses at the end.
Another related memory is of Kauto Star’s courage. Denman had taken him to a place he didn’t want to be; a torturous world where your lungs burn and every stride is painful. To be in that place and not give up is praiseworthy, to find the will to chase the winner, as Kauto Star did, was beyond mere admiration. In defeat, the champion raced like a true champion.
Afterwards, those who had believed Kauto Star to be unbeatable struggled for an explanation. The most reassuring was that the horse had an off-day and the proof of that seemed to lie in the evidence of his victory in the Tingle Creek Chase two years ago. How could he struggle with the pace of a Cheltenham Gold Cup when he had proved quick enough to win one of the premier two-mile races?
“I don’t think you can just say he had a bad day,” said one of racing’s most respected assessor’s of performance, Time-form’s Jim McGrath. “This was the slowest ground we have seen at Cheltenham since 1995 and in very tough conditions, Kauto Star’s stamina was found out. Stamina is like a piece of elastic, in that until you stretch it, you don’t know when it’s going to snap.”
That Nicholls and Denman’s owners, Barber and Findlay, had come up with the perfect tactics to expose the champion’s vulnerability was beyond dispute. Soon after the race, in a moment captured on Channel 4’s coverage, Findlay walked up to John Hales, owner of the third-placed Neptune Collonges, and thanked him for his help. One wonders what Clive Smith would have made of that.
But the tactics were beyond reproach. Neptune Collonges had produced by far the best run of his career and the fast pace worked for him as well as Denman. Perhaps the truest explanation of everything that happened is that Nicholls could not see Kauto Star losing the race. He planned a race that would give his second string every chance in the belief that the plan would be irrelevant in the end: that his string was just too good to be outmanoeuvred.
Findlay is a likeable man, a gambler not afraid to lose and with the character to come back from the toughest knocks. He says what is on his mind without always working out the effect on others. After the race, he talked about the impact of defeat on the 2007 champion. “I think that race will have absolutely blown Kauto Star’s head off,” he said.
He might as well have taken a needle to Clive Smith’s eyes.
And Nicholls, the horse trainer and man manager, is left to pick up the pieces. Perhaps the trainer saw it all play out in his mind’s eye in the days before it happened and that is why he got Smith’s other great horse, Master Minded, to produce one of the greatest performances we have ever seen at Cheltenham in the Queen Mother Champion Chase.
You gain a champion, you lose a champion; you are euphoric, you are heartbroken. And you have still got next year
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Jonathan Powell Mail On Sunday
Hostilities were briefly set aside yesterday as chasing's two celebrated heavyweights paraded through the Somerset village of Ditcheat.
Twenty-four hours earlier, Denman had all but knocked out his stable mate, the reigning champion Kauto Star, with a merciless drubbing in the Cheltenham Gold Cup.
Racing had expected an unforgiving head-to-head duel, but instead found itself witnessing one of the most intimidating laps of honour ever staged at Cheltenham.
The winner and the vanquished live in adjoining boxes on Millionaire's Corner at Paul Nicholls' yard. But they may never meet in battle again.
After a night of celebration at the Manor Inn, with the Gold Cup taking pride of place at the head of the table, Nicholls conceded: "We will probably try to keep them apart, but there is plenty of time to think about our plans. Maybe they won't meet again.
"Denman is the champion now. His joint owner, Harry Findlay, is on about next year's Grand National, but you can't really think of that after what he did on Friday. There is only one race we want him to win next year and that's a second Gold Cup.
"Kauto Star came off second-best this time, but don't write him off. I'm not making excuses but, for whatever reason, he wasn't sparkling.
"He was wound up in his stable at Cheltenham, walking round and round. He didn't jump with his usual fluency and once he hit those two fences at the end of the first circuit I knew it was already over for him. He wasn't cruising like he usually does.
"Down the hill I thought he might be beaten 25 lengths and I was proud of the way he kept going to reduce the gap to seven lengths at the line. That showed real character.
"You've seen Kauto Star in his box this morning and he's still revved up. He looks cheesed off. He will be back and we might look at other options for him. One could be the Ryanair Chase over a shorter distance at next year's Festival. His owner, Clive Smith, is a top man and took defeat like a great sportsman."
Ruby Walsh, who chose to ride Kauto Star on Friday, will be expecting to be back on Denman in future. But it is not a formality.
Paul Barber, Findlay's partner in Denman, admitted: "It's a difficult one to call. Ruby didn't desert his Gold Cup winner, Kauto Star, so do the owners and trainer of Denman desert Sam Thomas, the man who won the Gold Cup for them?"
Nicholls added: "Ruby is stable jockey, so he has the choice of everything we have here. But nothing is set in stone."
With a sharp wit and a fund of betting stories, Findlay is perceived by the racing public as the principal owner of Denman. Barber enjoys his role as the quiet man, but behind the scenes he continues to play a crucial part in the extraordinary success story of Nicholls.
The trainer acknowledged as much when he halted Denman's return to the winner's enclosure to let Barber take his rightful place at the horse's head.
Nicholls said: "I owe Paul so much. Yes, he's my landlord, but in a way he is as much a father figure to me as my dad. When he gave me my chance in 1991, I had only eight horses and £10,000 in savings. But I promised him I would make it happen."
Nicholls has repaid that support by delivering the Gold Cup twice for Barber, who was convinced Denman possessed the stamina and brutal power to unseat Kauto Star.
Barber explained: "I felt that Denman would annihilate them all in the Gold Cup because Kauto Star had yet to prove he stayed the trip.
"It was the only hole we could find in Kauto Star and we had to exploit it."
There were no doubts about Denman's stamina. When Barber quizzed Walsh about it when Denman beat Don't Push It at Cheltenham in November 2006, the jockey assured him: "This horse will stay six miles."
From Irish Independent
Among the great races and the crowning of new champions, it has been a little sad to have watched the coverage of the Cheltenham Festival and have to write the obituary for Channel Four Racing. At least the Channel Four Racing we used to know and love. Once it was bright, authoritative and ground-breaking, setting the standard for its rivals. Alas, it has become a pale shadow of its former self.
It does have most of the elements of what made it great. Alastair Down can sometimes veer towards over-sentimentality but hasn't lost the knack of capturing the great moments with the gravitas they require. Simon Holt is a fine race-caller. Ted Walsh gives as good value as ever and although, like Giles and Dunphy, they seem to have been around for ever, John Francome and Jim McGrath still lend the coverage an expert touch.
You can still forgive them their foibles. John McCririck may be a misogynistic, offensive bore but he's no worse than he was a decade ago and as soon as you see Derek Thompson heading towards a raucous crowd of drinkers with a microphone in his hand and an unctuous grin on his face you know it is the cue to take care of some business outside of the television room.
Other lapses were simply unforgivable, though. When a day's racing is lost because of risk to corporate clients you understand the Festival isn't purely about racing anymore, but to see Channel Four succumb to the fashion virus was particularly dispiriting. You only have to watch The Morning Line any Saturday to realise how ready the station is to dumb down its racing coverage, but this was a new low. Surely it's only a matter of time now before top hats and tails become obligatory in the winners' enclosure.
There were errors during the week; missed links, wrong race results, but on an occasion of this magnitude all of that was understandable. On Tuesday, however, Channel Four went for a commercial break and when they returned the field had already set off for the Arkle Chase. In racing coverage there is no greater sin. The fact that the station would even consider scheduling a break at such a delicate time was proof, if you needed it, that as far as racing is concerned, Channel Four has effectively dropped its reins.
Thankfully, we weren't without alternatives. Subscription channels often get a bad rap but the Cheltenham coverage on Racing UK was as faultless as you can get. There was a particularly entertaining interview with Denman's half-owner Harry Findlay to whet the appetite. Mostly though, it was just basic stuff: detailed pre-race discussions, then the race followed by an in-depth re-run and extensive analysis to see where your money went. And not a two-tone hat or floral pattern in sight.
It was all so simple and unfussy and, in its understated way, so utterly revolutionary.
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By Johnny Ward
Sunday March 16 2008
'I've been to The Nam," a battle-worn Irishman is reputed to have proclaimed on stepping off a plane one time. "Chelte-nham."
After just one day in the Cotswolds last week, I knew how he felt, as did many others. On the opening day, the bookies certainly won the battle, and by the end of the week it was safe enough to say that they'd won the war as well.
This is no ordinary time of year, as evidenced by men clinging to the Racing Post last Tuesday as they strode with purpose through departures at Dublin Airport. It is not yet 6am -- yet others have already started testing the black stuff in the bar.
Only kids have any zest for the day at this hour of the morning, I thought. On the plane to Bristol, the nattering and laughter does not cease for the duration of the flight.
I'd backed Harchibald -- who hates soft ground -- antepost for the Champion Hurdle and the grey skies reflect my mood as I enjoy a lift to Cheltenham in the car of fledgling Irish trainer James Barrett and his wife, Orla. She drives as her husband reads the Racing Post and directions.
I walk to the track with two hours to spare and the sun is baking my back. Yet half-an-hour later, a torrential shower that lasts about 20 minutes has effectively sealed Harchi's fate. It was all very frustrating, as the ground had been watered extensively the week before and was now too soft for a considerable number of fancied horses.
The day starts with the Supreme Novices' Hurdle. My antepost ally here, Sophocles, is available at twice the price on the track than the one at which I've backed him -- not good at all. He is one of the first beaten.
One down, 24 to go. As they go down to the start for the Arkle, I seek the solace of a cigarette -- it is surely no coincidence that one smokes much more regularly than normal at the races. When I return, my 11/1 fancy Clopf is going quite well; sadly, he has already ditched Andrew McNamara. At least Sophocles got around.
A more senior Sunday Independent colleague has backed Clopf and gets a sense of foreboding that will prove an accurate template for the remainder of the week. I meet him later, again in the See You Then Bar. He is sipping coffee incongruously, as Guinness-stained plastic cups mount on every table.
The Champion Hurdle proves a total shambles. Patriotism and betting on horses are uncomfortable bedfellows; nevertheless, that is the way most Irish are thinking. You really begin to question things when, having felt quite certain that an Irish horse would win the Champion, it turns out that English ones fill the first three.
Katchit is a gutsy little terrier but I have never really warmed to him, and it is sad to see Harchibald flounder and Sizing Europe go from probable winner to probable non-finisher in a matter of strides. By now, the skies are a dark shade of grey.
It gets no better in the William Hill Trophy. I pluck for a David Pipe horse, and he wins -- the trainer, rather than the horse. My selection, Abragante, wouldn't win a walkover on one of his many off-days, but the more straightforward An Accordion is well worth his victory. The Irish have plundered one of the first four.
Garde Champetre saves me somewhat in the Cross Country, and from talking to others it seems Nina Carberry is a general saviour today. Many marvel about her brilliance, but this is hardly something that was revealed today.
There are 22 horses running in the last, but 20 of them are irrelevant. I know it's a two-horse race, the bookies know it and so do the punters: only Ashkazar and River Liane seem to be attracting money.
Having punted the latter at 33/1 -- he goes off 11/4 -- I am justified in a feeling of excitement. I holler wildly as Davy Russell's mount jumps superbly three out to almost dispute the lead. At the next hurdle, he gets it all wrong and is shuffled back to about tenth. My handicap certainty finishes with more ahead of him than behind him, and his litany of backers are at a total loss to explain.
You look forward to Cheltenham for months, yet the course of three hours or so can leave you feeling very deflated. A scatter of pints would solve that, of course, and it would transpire that officials would afford us an extra day to recover.
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Eddie Freemantle in Observer
Anticipation often leads to disappointment, but this year's Cheltenham Festival delivered all that it promised, and more, with the highlight of 25 fine races the one we had all been waiting for. The Gold Cup was won in inimitable style by Denman, leading home a memorable one-two-three for the stable of Paul Nicholls, with former champion Kauto Star in second and Neptune Collonges third.
If Nicholls' effort did not quite match Michael Dickinson's famous five of 1983, it was not far off and Denman's victory has every right to sit with the best remembered, the likes of Arkle, Dawn Run, Desert Orchid and Best Mate.
Indeed, the race lived up to its billing as a modern-day Arkle v Mill House and, just as then, the underdog was to come out on top. Not that Denman, with immense raw-boned power contained within his huge frame, looked like an underdog. In the paddock, he towered like a Goliath.
From the moment Sam Thomas took him to the front with a circuit to go, there was a sense that the giant liver chestnut would stay there. Bravely, Neptune Collonges and Mick Fitzgerald tried to stay in touch as Denman motored on relentlessly. Then there was the realisation from those who had made Kauto Star odds-on to retain his crown that he was not going to do so. His jumping lacked fluency and his sparkle was dimmed. Perhaps it was the sticky ground, but much more likely was that his stamina was not there for this biggest of all tests.
But, like a true champion, Kauto Star put himself through the pain barrier to overhaul Neptune Collonges in the home straight and answer Ruby Walsh's urgings to hold the grey's rally for second place. Though the winning margin was seven lengths, this was not a victory gained without effort and Denman looked tired as he wandered slightly in the last few yards, although his achievement in cold figures was one of the best in history
Neptune Collonges' owner, John Hales, did not look like a man who was contemplating what might have been - had the other pair from his horse's stable not been around - as he led in his grey with a grin as wide as Cleeve Hill. Hales, who had insisted that Fitzgerald take over from Liam Heard in the saddle, had realised that his horse had played a part in one of the great Cheltenham races. You had to feel sorry for Heard that he had no involvement, but Fitzgerald helped ensure that Neptune Collonges was well clear of a host of top-notch animals.
The fourth, Halcon Genelardais, had been beaten by inches in the Welsh National with 11st 12lb on his back; the fifth, Exotic Dancer, was finishing out of the first three for the first time in 12 starts; the sixth, Knowhere, had beaten Thursday's Ryanair winner Our Vic at Cheltenham last time; and the last to finish, more than 113 lengths behind Denman, Afistfullofdollars, was supplemented after beating 2005 Grand National hero and 2006 Gold Cup runner-up Hedgehunter at Fairyhouse.
As Nicholls looked almost shocked by what he and his team had achieved, Kauto Star's owner Clive Smith took defeat on the chin. Nicholls' landlord, the dairy farmer Paul Barber, who owns Denman with professional gambler Harry Findlay, was as understated as Findlay is overstated, but proud he had won a second Gold Cup to go with that of See More Business.
Findlay, briefly lost for words, then launched forth, talking of 'the secret club of half a dozen people' - founder members Barber and Findlay - who 'knew' that Denman would eventually scale these heights, a belief that formed after Denman beat Karanja by 16 lengths despite nearly running off the course in a novices' hurdle at Wincanton in November 2005. Since then, the big horse has been beaten only once, in the SunAlliance Hurdle of 2006. Findlay maintains that, even in that sole defeat, Denman showed his battling qualities and that ever since he has had an indomitable will to win that breaks other horses.
That 'club', says Findlay, included Walsh, who had had to make the choice between Denman and Kauto Star. How many, given that dilemma, would not have opted for the reigning champion? And this second place helped Walsh to the consolation of the prize for jockey of the Festival, beating Robert Thornton. Both won three races, as did Nicholls and Thornton's principal boss, Alan King.
Another of Nicholls' wins came in Thursday's Queen Mother Champion Chase when Master Minded put up a performance considered better than Denman's in the opinion of the official handicapper, Phil Smith. Master Minded jumped brilliantly and hammered last year's winner, Voy Por Ustedes, by 19 lengths. The runner-up always does his best and Master Minded, only five years old, had old-timers comparing him to Flyingbolt and the middle-aged to Badsworth Boy. Even the more recent Moscow Flyer never looked as good as this.
Inglis Drever does not win like Master Minded. He grinds and grinds his rivals down. Kasbah Bliss and Kazal looked as though they were going to beat him in the World Hurdle, but Inglis Drever kept finding more to edge out the French challenger under Denis O'Regan, a jockey both powerful and stylish. That gave Drever an unprecedented third World Hurdle at the age of nine, old for a hurdler these days, and his jockey, trainer Howard Johnson and owner Graham Wylie a second prize to add to Tidal Bay's Tuesday Arkle romp.
The Champion Chase was meant to be run on Wednesday, but high winds had caused some damage to facilities at the racecourse. Conditions were considered too dangerous and just about the only people pleased were pub landlords.
The Plough next to Jonjo O'Neill's yard and the Hollow Bottom near Nigel Twiston-Davies' were packed to the gunnels, with several owners, trainers and jockeys letting their hair down before a 10-race rejigged card on Thursday.
At the Hollow Bottom, Irish trainer Tony Martin had stepped outside to make a call. It was hard to know whether he was conducting a postmortem into first-day defeats of fancied Wonderkid and Patsy Hall or making plans for later runners Robin Du Bois and Psycho. In any event, Martin was to go home empty-handed, with Paul Carberry doing an imitation of a mounted policeman on Psycho in the County Hurdle. Getting going too late, Psycho was beaten by Silver Jaro, under a far more proactive ride from Noel Fehily.
There were plenty who finished out of the money who will win good races. Unfortunately, the performance of Silver Charmer, sixth in the new David Nicholson Mares Hurdle, will mean she is likely to go up a few pounds in the handicap, but she looked in need of this run.
Amateur rider Rose Davidson was unable to use her 5lb claim on Middleton Dene in the Spa Hurdle, but her mount gave her a great ride to finish sixth. Middleton Dene, best on a left-handed course, should be winning soon.
Ashkazar, caught on the run-in by Crack Away Jack in Tuesday's Fred Winter, had to race into the teeth of the gale up the hill, while the winner had more cover. He looks ideal for Aintree. Perhaps, like Denman in that SunAlliance, Ashkazar will find strength in defeat.
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Brough Scott in The Telegraph
Denman's whole life had led to this. He would set off to attack round Cheltenham's great anvil of dreams and gallop and jump until the best horse in the world was battered into submission behind him. It was what he had been bred and trained and raced for. It would be two circuits, 22 fences and 6mins 47secs of fulfilment on the hoof.
To be exact, the big attack did not come until they started the second circuit. Until then Denman had been tracking the grey Neptune Collonges whilst Kauto Star kept track along the inside about four lengths away. Until then you could not spot a chink in the defending champion. Some of us thought he looked a touch tight, his skin dull in the paddock, but maybe that was more our nerves than his. Then, just as Sam Thomas decided to play Denman from the front, Ruby Walsh had a problem. At the 11th fence, the second-last on the final circuit, Kauto galloped in and clouted it.
This happens. But you don't want it to happen too often. They came thundering towards us at the 12th, the final fence in this Gold Cup next time. When he had approached it for the first time, the second jump of the race, Kauto Star had put in such a huge spring-heeled leap that he landed almost too steeply. This time he didn't. Kauto galloped in again and clouted it.
It wasn't dangerous, like it used to be a year ago. But he had missed it. Walsh has a poker player's stillness about him, but he now knew his hand wasn't perfect.
Not that he betrayed anything down the back stretch. Denman was piling it on up ahead of Neptune Collonges, the lesser horses were already being driven. But Kauto was neat enough. It didn't matter that he was still five lengths adrift at the 17th, the last open ditch. But it did at the 18th at the top of the hill, for he galloped in and clouted hard again. Denman was launching off down the hill and Walsh had the stick up. Kauto was in trouble.
advertisementThere was no mistaking it. The champion had taken the equivalent of a knock-down. He was on his feet but the contender was pummelling him. Kauto got good jumps at the 19th and 20th but he couldn't even take Neptune Collonges. There was a roar from the crowd as Denman's name was called, but also a strange muted feel. For Kauto this was not going to be just defeat, but humiliation. Yet he had not become a 15-victory, six-season champion without being a battler.
The game looked up as Thomas thundered round the last turn for those final two fences with an ever widening gap behind him. But Walsh dug deep as he drove Kauto up the inside to that penultimate fence and the horse's long white blaze came up with a mighty leap to finally take second. As Denman came towards us, the roll of his forelegs showed the strain was biting. If he was to blunder and Kauto could get another big jump there was just a chance of the equivalent of a last-round knock-out.
But Denman kept his rhythm. He landed weary but running. Kauto drove in but clouted, and as he came away from the fence he staggered slightly sideways. You should always look at the forelegs. Denman's were no longer moving easily but at least they were rolling. Kauto's had lost their bite. It was over. Afterwards the mind was in a muddle. Denman was the new champion. Thomas well deserved his arm-punching elation. The ownership 'Odd Couple' of Paul Barber and Harry Findlay had their belief fully vindicated and Paul Nicholls' achievement of training the first three home recalled the 1983 Famous Five of Michael Dickinson. Yet this had not been Arkle/Mill House after all. That cold clear day in 1964, both sets of supporters could still believe as they swung for home and then Arkle changed it all. Here the champion had been in trouble too early. We can't be really sure until the re-match.
With this bizarre, stable-companions, all-good-friends, no-edge rivalry, there was no chance of one of those wound-licking 'I will follow him to the end of the earth and then I will beat him' declarations which Jimmy Connors would say after another defeat by Bjorn Borg. But it seemed important to walk back to the wash-down with the loser.
Sonja Warburton has been Kauto Star's closest companion. "The most important thing is that they are all home safely," she said patting her horse's sweat-soaked neck. "But I think the ground was a bit sticky for him. For me he is still a champion."
The small knot of fans broke into spontaneous, sympathetic applause as she led Kauto out into the ring after his wash-over. They did the same in more cheery mode when lofty, grey-suited young Harry Fry came up with Denman. Away in the paddock you could hear the loudspeaker calling Jess Allen to the podium as groom to the winner. The two horses circled together with the familiarity of the stablemates they are. Kauto Star still tall and grand, Denman even bigger, but that low chestnut neck making him look slightly less than the 17 hands that he is.
Eventually Allen came up to join us. She will become a mother in the summer. "I could feel the baby kicking on the run-in," she said. But even that wide-eyed wonder could not stem thoughts of her four-legged hero.
"Yesterday morning," she said, "I put my hand on the bottom of his neck and for the first time ever it was just one slab of muscle. Paul asked me how he was. I said he had never been fitter."
The two horses were led off to share a box home to Somerset. They don't look as if they argue but we have to hope the debate is not over. Seven lengths was the verdict. It was decisive but not necessarily final. Next March, let's hope it's not only the daffodils that are blooming.
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From The Times
Paul Nicholls is a serious man, ambitious, driven, and if ever he has stopped to smell the flowers, he has done so in the privacy of his own garden. He is a trainer to be respected, not one that invites or seeks affection. But let there be no mistaking what we saw unfold in the Cotswolds on Friday afternoon for it was a magnificent feat of horse training and a quite brilliant piece of management.
To enter three horses in the Gold Cup and have them finish first, second and third is immensely impressive but 25 years ago, Michael Dickinson went two better than that. What elevates Nicholls’s achievement was the way he managed the challenge of two star horses that needed different tactics and owners who had to believe their horses were fairly treated. This was no simple task because the starting point was a conflict of interest: by doing everything he could to ensure that Denman might win the Gold Cup, Nicholls had to make tactical decisions that lessened Kauto Star’s chances of winning a second consecutive Gold Cup. How did he square that with Clive Smith, Kauto Star’s owner? To Nicholls, the equine dilemmas would have been simpler than their human equivalents.
There were subtleties for which there were no easy solutions. Denman is owned by Paul Barber and Harry Findlay, and because it was Barber who set up Nicholls as a trainer on his farm at Ditcheat in Somerset, their relationship is usually close. At one level, Barber is landlord and Nicholls is tenant. At another, it is personal and the older man, Barber, has clearly had an almost paternal influence on Nicholls’s career.
It would be hard to be another owner in Nicholls’s yard and not fear that however high you figured in the trainer’s pecking order, you would still find yourself beneath Barber. Smith once had his team of horses trained by Martin Pipe but switched to Nicholls partly because he felt Pipe’s first allegiance would always be to his biggest owner, David Johnson. Nicholls is a clever man and saw the potential for conflict once Denman asserted himself as a genuine challenger to Kauto Star’s position of eminence. From that point, Nicholls has played the most thoughtful game.
Related Links
Denman refuses to be drawn into battle with show of strength
Denman vs Kauto Star: Andrew Longmore's verdict
Findlay cashes in after letting his horse do talking
Plotting alternative paths to the Gold Cup for his two famous chasers was not difficult and he ensured both had the kind of confidence-boosting victories horses need before a big race. Once it became clear both would be in the Gold Cup, Nicholls’s intelligence became more apparent by the day.
The first decision was which horse the stable’s No 1 jockey Ruby Walsh would ride. Given the importance of that decision, the easy thing for the trainer was to stay neutral, but he suggested to Walsh that he should stick with Kauto Star, the horse who gave him his first Gold Cup winner. Walsh would almost certainly have chosen to partner Kauto Star in any case, but it would have been reassuring for the horse’s owner to know the trainer agreed with the jockey’s decision.
When asked in January and February how he thought the Gold Cup would unfold, Nicholls offered us endless neutrality. Two great horses, who knows? Then in the final 10 days, there was a shift and he spoke often about his belief in Kauto Star and how he rated him the best horse he had trained.
On the morning of the race, he spoke passionately about his belief in last season’s champion: “I’ve been convinced for well over a year that Kauto Star is not only the best horse I’ve ever had, but the best I am ever likely to train, so I still can’t bring myself to believe the horse in the box next door to him is going to turn out even better than the champion. But I simply don’t know, and that’s the fascinating thing about their epic clash.”
It was almost like he talked up Kauto Star to deflect attention from the fact that he and Denman’s owners were meticulously planning a tactical race to beat the champion. For there is no doubt that is what they did and what they were entitled to do, however hard that was going to be for Smith.
Central to the strategy was Nicholls’s third runner, the sev-en-year-old Neptune Collonges. A good-looking grey, he is a fine chaser who does best in races that play to his boundless stamina. It suits him to set the pace and his role in the Gold Cup was clearly defined, to lead the race through the first circuit and at a pace that would stretch those behind him.
Nicholls does not leave things to chance. Liam Heard, a good but inexperienced jockey, had been expected to ride Neptune Collonges but there was a fear he would go too quick. A few days before the race, the trainer switched to the masterful horseman Mick Fitzgerald, a superb judge of pace. Fitzgerald did his job perfectly and when Sam Thomas and Denman jumped past him at the fence in front of the stands after a circuit, there was a sense of watching a race-plan of military precision unfold in front of you. Thomas gradually wound up the pace and because he is young and brave, he was always going to err on the side of a murderous pace.
And that is what he set. Walsh had not been that comfortable on Kauto Star through the first circuit, although at the pace set by Neptune Collonges, his horse’s jumping was fine. Once Denman got onto the back straight and Thomas increased the tempo, Kauto Star’s jumping disintegrated. He hit the top of one fence, then another, and another � and unless something unforeseen happened, the game was up for the champion.
In his determination to find a chink in Kauto Star’s stamina, Thomas probably asked Denman to do too much too soon but it was not a mistake, rather the exuberance of youth and the jockey’s fear that any lessening of the pace would play into his chief rival’s hands.
There will be many memories from the race, and perhaps the greatest will be of how the two protagonists jumped. Because Denman was racing six to 10 lengths in front of Kauto Star for much of the 3Ämile journey, we could watch his jumping and then watch Kauto Star’s. The difference was significant and, in some respects, the surprise lay in the fact that just seven lengths separated the horses at the end.
Another related memory is of Kauto Star’s courage. Denman had taken him to a place he didn’t want to be; a torturous world where your lungs burn and every stride is painful. To be in that place and not give up is praiseworthy, to find the will to chase the winner, as Kauto Star did, was beyond mere admiration. In defeat, the champion raced like a true champion.
Afterwards, those who had believed Kauto Star to be unbeatable struggled for an explanation. The most reassuring was that the horse had an off-day and the proof of that seemed to lie in the evidence of his victory in the Tingle Creek Chase two years ago. How could he struggle with the pace of a Cheltenham Gold Cup when he had proved quick enough to win one of the premier two-mile races?
“I don’t think you can just say he had a bad day,” said one of racing’s most respected assessor’s of performance, Time-form’s Jim McGrath. “This was the slowest ground we have seen at Cheltenham since 1995 and in very tough conditions, Kauto Star’s stamina was found out. Stamina is like a piece of elastic, in that until you stretch it, you don’t know when it’s going to snap.”
That Nicholls and Denman’s owners, Barber and Findlay, had come up with the perfect tactics to expose the champion’s vulnerability was beyond dispute. Soon after the race, in a moment captured on Channel 4’s coverage, Findlay walked up to John Hales, owner of the third-placed Neptune Collonges, and thanked him for his help. One wonders what Clive Smith would have made of that.
But the tactics were beyond reproach. Neptune Collonges had produced by far the best run of his career and the fast pace worked for him as well as Denman. Perhaps the truest explanation of everything that happened is that Nicholls could not see Kauto Star losing the race. He planned a race that would give his second string every chance in the belief that the plan would be irrelevant in the end: that his string was just too good to be outmanoeuvred.
Findlay is a likeable man, a gambler not afraid to lose and with the character to come back from the toughest knocks. He says what is on his mind without always working out the effect on others. After the race, he talked about the impact of defeat on the 2007 champion. “I think that race will have absolutely blown Kauto Star’s head off,” he said.
He might as well have taken a needle to Clive Smith’s eyes.
And Nicholls, the horse trainer and man manager, is left to pick up the pieces. Perhaps the trainer saw it all play out in his mind’s eye in the days before it happened and that is why he got Smith’s other great horse, Master Minded, to produce one of the greatest performances we have ever seen at Cheltenham in the Queen Mother Champion Chase.
You gain a champion, you lose a champion; you are euphoric, you are heartbroken. And you have still got next year
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Jonathan Powell Mail On Sunday
Hostilities were briefly set aside yesterday as chasing's two celebrated heavyweights paraded through the Somerset village of Ditcheat.
Twenty-four hours earlier, Denman had all but knocked out his stable mate, the reigning champion Kauto Star, with a merciless drubbing in the Cheltenham Gold Cup.
Racing had expected an unforgiving head-to-head duel, but instead found itself witnessing one of the most intimidating laps of honour ever staged at Cheltenham.
The winner and the vanquished live in adjoining boxes on Millionaire's Corner at Paul Nicholls' yard. But they may never meet in battle again.
After a night of celebration at the Manor Inn, with the Gold Cup taking pride of place at the head of the table, Nicholls conceded: "We will probably try to keep them apart, but there is plenty of time to think about our plans. Maybe they won't meet again.
"Denman is the champion now. His joint owner, Harry Findlay, is on about next year's Grand National, but you can't really think of that after what he did on Friday. There is only one race we want him to win next year and that's a second Gold Cup.
"Kauto Star came off second-best this time, but don't write him off. I'm not making excuses but, for whatever reason, he wasn't sparkling.
"He was wound up in his stable at Cheltenham, walking round and round. He didn't jump with his usual fluency and once he hit those two fences at the end of the first circuit I knew it was already over for him. He wasn't cruising like he usually does.
"Down the hill I thought he might be beaten 25 lengths and I was proud of the way he kept going to reduce the gap to seven lengths at the line. That showed real character.
"You've seen Kauto Star in his box this morning and he's still revved up. He looks cheesed off. He will be back and we might look at other options for him. One could be the Ryanair Chase over a shorter distance at next year's Festival. His owner, Clive Smith, is a top man and took defeat like a great sportsman."
Ruby Walsh, who chose to ride Kauto Star on Friday, will be expecting to be back on Denman in future. But it is not a formality.
Paul Barber, Findlay's partner in Denman, admitted: "It's a difficult one to call. Ruby didn't desert his Gold Cup winner, Kauto Star, so do the owners and trainer of Denman desert Sam Thomas, the man who won the Gold Cup for them?"
Nicholls added: "Ruby is stable jockey, so he has the choice of everything we have here. But nothing is set in stone."
With a sharp wit and a fund of betting stories, Findlay is perceived by the racing public as the principal owner of Denman. Barber enjoys his role as the quiet man, but behind the scenes he continues to play a crucial part in the extraordinary success story of Nicholls.
The trainer acknowledged as much when he halted Denman's return to the winner's enclosure to let Barber take his rightful place at the horse's head.
Nicholls said: "I owe Paul so much. Yes, he's my landlord, but in a way he is as much a father figure to me as my dad. When he gave me my chance in 1991, I had only eight horses and £10,000 in savings. But I promised him I would make it happen."
Nicholls has repaid that support by delivering the Gold Cup twice for Barber, who was convinced Denman possessed the stamina and brutal power to unseat Kauto Star.
Barber explained: "I felt that Denman would annihilate them all in the Gold Cup because Kauto Star had yet to prove he stayed the trip.
"It was the only hole we could find in Kauto Star and we had to exploit it."
There were no doubts about Denman's stamina. When Barber quizzed Walsh about it when Denman beat Don't Push It at Cheltenham in November 2006, the jockey assured him: "This horse will stay six miles."
