“How did he get beat in the Fred Winter off a mark of 129?”

Everyone else seems to want to insert that line into their assessment of this year’s Cheltenham Gold Cup winner so I thought that I may as well insert it too. For what it’s worth, I had the French recruits nailed down that year and had he got the better of Brazil, it would have been a record year for me when Vauban duly dotted up on the Friday. Alas, he did get beat and the Gaelic Warrior that we saw on Friday afternoon has come a long way since 2022. He was still a raw recruit in that Fred Winter, sometimes keen, hard to predict and capable of throwing in a below par performance if he was having an off day. Now, he is a mature 8-year-old who has improved with every year of racing and he is the finished article. Horse’s with the ability to win an Arkle and then step up to the Gold Cup trip don’t come around that often and the fact that the first 2 horses to cross the line this year were both winners of the Arkle shouldn’t be underestimated. Ironically, the winning time of 6:39.02s made this the fastest Gold Cup victory since Sizing John (2017) who was the last horse to win this race having run in the Arkle as a Novice. The ground played a huge part in that, with the winning time was 3s faster than the TPD expected time for the race on Good to Soft ground, but the fact that this is the Gold Cup, the pinnacle of our sport, would also mean that we were more likely to get a decent time figure from an impressive winner.

I don’t need to tell you how good this performance was, your eyes can do that for you. Paul Townend gave Gaelic Warrior a perfect ride and when the taps were turned on after they jumped the 4th from home, he was always going best of all. The data backs that up completely. Gaelic Warrior was the fastest horse in the field in 4 of the final 5 furlong splits and he was the only horse to record a late speed figure above 30 mph (Gaelic Warrior 30.41 mph, Jango Baie 29.05 mph). He was away and gone when jumping the 2nd last, with the 13.12s that he recorded for the 24th furlong producing the fastest individual split in the entire race as he went away from Jango Baie. Paul Townend decided to maintain his speed and the 14.48 and 14.97s times that he recorded for the final 2 furlongs made him the only horse to run sub 15s splits at the end of the contest, but this was a case of a classy horse winning the Gold Cup and leaving the others toiling. A winning margin of 8 lengths probably doesn’t do justice to just how easily Gaelic Warrior was able to win this race.

This wasn’t a case of beating the older horses. He reversed the form of the King George, beat last year’s Gold Cup winner by over a second and had far too much speed for the best of last year’s Novice Chasers. This was comprehensive and if he arrives here in the same form next year, it will take a truly exceptional performance to beat him. But history tells us, that is a big “if” with 364 days to go.