As is often repeated, Arkle is the benchmark by which every steeplechaser since the mid-Sixties has been measured. If his Timeform Annual Rating of 212 is to be believed, of the hundreds of thousands of steeplechasers to have raced in the last five decades or more, only stable companion Flyingbolt came with 30lb of Arkle.
Arkle was owned by Anne Grosvenor, Duchess of Westminster, in whose iconic yellow and black colours he raced, and trained by Tom Dreaper in Ashbourne, Co. Meath. He was ridden in all 26 steeplechases, of which he won 22, by the late Pat Taaffe. As far as the Cheltenham Festival is concerned, Arkle won the Broadway Novices’ Chase – now the RSA Insurance Novices’ Chase – as a six-year-old in 1963, but will aways be best remembered for winning the Cheltenham Gold Cup three years running in 1964, 1965 and 1966.
On the first occasion, Arkle beat defending champion Mill House – potentially the best steeplechaser since the legendary Golden Miller, according to his trainer Fulke Walwyn – by five lengths and broke the course record by four seconds. On the second occasion, Arkle beat the same horse by twenty lengths and, on the third, in the absence of Mill House, sidelined with tendon trouble, beat Dormant and three other rivals by thirty lengths and upwards at prohibitive odds of 1/10; in so doing, he became the shortest-priced winner in the history of the Cheltenham Gold Cup. Whether or not his Timeform Annual Rating was exaggerated is debatable, but such was his superiority over his contemporaries that, had his career not been ended prematurely – by an injury sustained in the King George VI Chase at Kempton – in 1966, it is not difficult to envisage Arkle having added to his Cheltenham Gold Cup tally.
