Gold Cup path to greatness opens up for Gaelic Warrior

What is it that makes a champion?

- MICHAEL JONES

Is it enough to simply win, or could there be more nuance to those on whom we bequeath the title? There have been many winners of the Cheltenham Gold Cup but fewer champions. The race was first run in 1924 and, excepting a few occasions, has been run every year since.

The horses which history remembers as champions have triumphed in this race multiple times - Golden Miller, Arkle, Best Mate, for example. Eight horses have won the race in consecutive years, with Al Boum Photo (2019 and 2020) and Galopin Des Champs (2023 and 2024) the most recent achievers. In the 2000s, Kauto Star became the only horse to regain the title, having first won it in 2007 before triumphing again in 2009.

That is a feat Galopin Des Champs would have tried to replicate this year, had he not suffered a setback before the Festival, but with Willie Mullins’s champion horse absent, others had to fill the hole he left behind, to step into the spotlight and declare, ‘this is my time’. And there were plenty that tried.

The Gold Cup is the grandest of horse races and is staged at a racecourse that is the highlight of luxury and opulence. It almost feels like a remnant of a previous British age, where prestige was defined by money or power, and if you were bereft of those, you had to earn recognition in other ways.

You had to fight to be seen, not just as a winner but as a champion. Winning here, and in this race, means more than a season of triumphs at lesser meetings. It is where champions are made. Irish-trained horses had won nine of the last 10 runnings, with the British-trained Native River being the anomaly in 2018. They now have 10 from the last 11.