Golden moments

It is 90 years since Golden Miller won the first of a record-breaking five victories in the Cheltenham Gold Cup. Jack Watkins looks back at other equine heroes of the race and assesses Al Boum Photo’s chances of making history at this year’s Festival

- Jack Watkins

WHO is the greatest Cheltenham Gold Cup winner of all time? When the flag goes up for the 94th running of Britain’s most prestigious steeplechase next Friday, March 18, the Irish-trained Al Boum Photo will be bidding for a third victory in four years. If he succeeds, it will put him in the rarefied company of legendary horses Golden Miller, Cottage Rake, Arkle, and Best Mate. However, unlike these multiple winners, he will not have won it in consecutive years and he may be somewhat grudgingly accepted into the pantheon by racing traditionalists.

The Gold Cup is a tough race, invariably run at an unrelentingly strong pace over a stiff and undulating three miles, two furlongs with 22 fences that take no prisoners, and an uphill climb of half a mile to the finishing post. It’s arduous enough for many a contestant’s forms to drop off subsequently.

It is a mighty feat, therefore, for Al Boum Photo’s trainer Willie Mullins to get a fragile racehorse back for the race for a fourth time (he was third last year). Yet, in an era when the leading jumps trainers tend to restrict the number of races their best horses run in, Al Boum Photo has been even more lightly campaigned than most. If he wins, he and his connections will deserve all the plaudits they get, not least because older horses seldom triumph (the last 10 year old to win was Cool Dawn in 1998). However, it must be said that it is hard for racegoers to take a horse to their hearts when they see it so rarely.