Cheltenham Legends

Rupert ‘Ruby’ Walsh, who retired from race riding, with immediate effect, after winning the Puchestown Gold Cup on Kemboy on May 1, 2019, has the distinction of being the most successful jockey in the history of the Cheltenham Festival. Indeed, he was leading jockey at the Festival a record eleven times – in 2004, 2006, 2008-2011 and 2013-2017 – and his career total of 59 winners at the March showpiece meeting is some way ahead of his nearest rival, Barry Geraghty, with 43.

‘Mr. R.Walsh’, as he was listed on the racecard, opened his Cheltenham Festival aboard Alexander Banquet – also, coincidentally, the first of 213 Grade One winners he rode during his career – in the Weatherbys Champion Bumper in 1998. Walsh turned professional later that year and, over the next two decades, won each of the four main ‘championship’ races at least twice apiece.

Arguably his most memorable victories came aboard Kauto Star in the Cheltenham Gold Cup, in 2007 and, especially, in 2009, but he also won the Champion Hurdle four times, the Queen Mother Champion Chase four times and the Stayers’ Hurdle five times. Indeed, he won the Stayers’ Hurdle, known at the time as the ‘World Hurdle’, on the same horse, Big Buck’s, four years running in 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2012. Just for good measure, Walsh also won the Ryanair Chase – introduced to the Festival programme in 2005, as a ‘championship’ steeplechase over the ‘intermediate’ distance of 2 miles 5 fulongs – four times, most recently on Un De Sceaux in 2017. He rode his final Cheltenham Festival winner, Klassical Dream, in the Supreme Novices’ Hurdle in 2019.

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.

Irish billionaire John Patrick McManus, almost invariably known in racing circles as ‘J.P.’, is far and away the most successful owner in the history of the Cheltenham Festival. McManus will always be indebted to his first Festival winner, Mister Donovan, who he later reflected, ‘…got me out of all sorts of trouble’, in what is now the Ballymore Novices’ Hurdle in 1982. However, McManus’ famous green and gold hooped silks have since been carried into the winners’ enclosure at Prestbury Park during the March showpiece a total of 67 times.

Of the four main ‘championship’ races run at the Festival, McManus has won the Champion Hurdle a record nine times, the Stayers’ Hurdle three times and the Cheltenham Gold Cup once. Undoubtedly, McManus’ best horse, so far, was Istrabraq, who won the Champion Hurdle three years running in 1998, 1999 and 2000 and, with a Timeform Annual Rating of 180, remains the second highest-rated hurdler, behind only Night Nurse, since the early Sixties.

The Queen Mother Champion Chase, in which McManus finished second with Flagship Uberalles in 2004 and Fota Island in 2006, but has never won, remains one of the few races in which he has yet to triumph. Indeed, he looked to have as genuine a chance as ever in 2020, when his Defi Du Seuil was sent off 2/5 for the two-mile chasing championship, but ran inexplicably badly, trailing in a well-beaten fourth of five.

When compared with other leading trainers at the Cheltenham Festival, such as Willie Mullins, Nicky Henderson and Paul Nicholls, Henry de Bromhead, who is based in Knockeen, Co. Waterford, is very much the ‘new kid on the block’. That said, he did saddle his first Festival winner, Sizing Europe, in the Arkle Challenge Trophy in 2010, but he has since increased his winning tally to 15, including 13 at Grade One level.

Sizing Europe followed up in the Queen Mother Champion Chase in 2011, but it wasn’t until 2017, when Special Tiara won the same race for the yard, that de Bromhead really started to emerge as a force majeure at the Cheltenham Festival. In 2018, he won the Ryanair Chase with Balko Des Flos, in 2019, the Albert Bartlett Novices’ Hurdle with Minella Indo and, in 2020, added two more Grade One winners to his tally, courtesy of Put The Kettle On in the Arkle Challenge Trophy and Honeysuckle in the Close Brothers Mares’ Hurdle.

Even so, the best was yet to come for de Bromhead. At the 2021 Cheltenham Festival, he not only saddled six winners, five of them at Grade One level, but also became one of the few trainers to complete the Champion Hurdle – Cheltenham Gold Cup double, courtesy of Honeysuckle and Minella Indo. In fact, he saddled the same number of winners as leading trainer Willie Mullins and although beaten, fairly comprehensively, on countback, did have the satisfaction of seeing his stable jockey, Rachael Blackmore, make history by becoming the first female jockey to win the leading jockey award.