Nicky Henderson stands an excellent chance of becoming the most successful trainer in the history of the Cheltenham Festival when the great meeting takes place next month. He has had 37 winners, three fewer than Fulke Walwyn, and is expected to send loads of fancied runners this time.
I really like the chances of his Long Run in the Gold Cup but I haven't got round to backing him yet and one of the reasons for that dithering is this: I'm put off by Henderson's lack of success in the race. Amazingly, he has saddled just five individual horses for the Gold Cup and none of them managed to get into the frame.
Of course, he hasn't often had the right material. I think of Henderson as a trainer of speed horses and, if pressed to justify that, would point to the five Champion Hurdles, the five Triumph Hurdles and the three Arkles.
He may be the best trainer of two-mile handicap hurdlers in the time I've been following the sport. On the other hand (and this may be my prejudice), I have quite a few memories of his horses fading after travelling well when stepped up to longer distances.
Still, I don't really think his Gold Cup record is something that should be held against Long Run, whose background is quite different to those Henderson has fielded before. Here are the losers in question.
1) Raffi Nelson pulled up in 1981
Ridden by Steve Smith Eccles, Raffi Nelson had won what is now the Argento Chase at Cheltenham in 1980. That didn't seem to earn him much respect on Gold Cup day, however, as he started at 100-1 and was pulled up before the second-last in Little Owl's race.
"He was a good handicapper, but he wasn't really Gold Cup class," Smith Eccles told me. "He was outclassed in the race but he was a nice ride to have – he was a good little jumper with no quirks."
The experience may not have been a happy one for Henderson, who didn't send out another Gold Cup runner for 21 years. Imagine, a whole generation during which the man who may shortly become the most successful in the meeting's history did not have a runner in the Festival's biggest race.
Some great horses passed through Seven Barrows in those years: See You Then, Remittance Man, The Tsarevich, Travado and Stormyfairweather. Henderson had plenty of Festival success and was twice champion trainer, but he didn't go near the Gold Cup. Until . . .
2) Bacchanal 12th in 2002
I really fancied Bacchanal for the Gold Cup, to the extent of persuading my editor at Racing & Football Outlook to let me tip him on the front of our Cheltenham edition. The World Hurdle winner in 2000, he would have been a leading fancy for the RSA Chase in 2001 if the Festival had not been abandoned because of foot and mouth.
Bacchanal didn't seem a natural jumper of fences, but he won four of his first five chases and was a good third to Florida Pearl and Best Mate in the 2001 King George, a long way clear of the previous year's winner, First Gold. He got outpaced in the closing stages that day but Cheltenham's greater test would surely suit him more than it would the two that beat him at Kempton.
Sent off at 6-1, he was a major disappointment, jumping erratically and looking beaten with eight fences to go. He finished 50 lengths behind Best Mate, winning his first Gold Cup. The only horse behind Bacchanal was Looks Like Trouble, who suffered a recurrence of a leg injury in mid-race and never ran over fences again. My editor was not happy.
3) Marlborough 4th in 2002, 11th in 2003
Two years older than Bacchanal, Marlborough was supposed to be Henderson's second-string in 2002, when he was a 12-1 shot. He'd also won at the 2000 Festival, but only in the William Hill Trophy, a mere handicap, and he'd been hammered 12 lengths by Bacchanal in the Aon at Newbury.
On the other hand, that had been his first race for 10 months and he had been a lot closer to Bacchanal at the last, before blowing up. He was unbeaten in two starts over the Cheltenham fences and entitled to respect in any race there.
He made several mistakes in the Gold Cup but kept on keeping on, finishing 16 lengths adrift of Best Mate but comfortably ahead of the other seven finishers.
Marlborough produced a career best effort the following winter to be second to Best Mate in the King George, when he still had a winning chance at the last, but he seemed to be feeling his 11 years by the time of the 2003 Gold Cup. He never got into it and was beaten 60 lengths.
4) Irish Hussar pulled up in 2004
Was Henderson getting a taste for the blue riband of steeplechasing? Having shunned the race for much of his career, he had a runner for the third year in a row.
Irish Hussar would have had a more obvious chance in the Cathcart, in which he'd been a good second the year before. He'd run a fine Gold Cup trial when narrowly beaten by Shooting Light in the Aon but few could see any of the field denying Best Mate his hat-trick, and certainly not some 16-1 shot who had never won outside novice company.
The eight-year-old Irish Hussar ran rather as though he was still a novice that day. He made two serious mistakes, rallying gamely from the first but ending his chance with the second. He was pulled up two fences later, eight from home.
5) Barbers Shop 7th in 2009
A royal runner in the Gold Cup! Barbers Shop had come close to giving the Queen a Festival winner in 2008, when beaten just a neck by Finger Onthe Pulse in the Jewson.
Barry Geraghty, the winning rider that day, should have been dragged off to the Tower. Instead, he got the leg-up on Barbers Shop the following season, after the retirement of Mick Fitzgerald.
The new partnership began with a close second to Imperial Commander, who was getting 3lb from them in the Paddy Power. There's a piece of form that doesn't look too shabby now.
Barbers Shop won an intermediate chase at Sandown in December, his last run before the Gold Cup, for which he started at 10-1. Considering the opposition (Kauto Star, Denman, Exotic Dancer, Neptune Collonges), odds of 10-1 suggested he was a pretty good animal, but he looked weak in the race.
Sticky over the fourth-last and third-last fences, he faded quickly, having cruised round for most of the way. It seemed the performance of a non-stayer but Henderson pointed out that he was only seven and entitled to do better after another year of maturation.
Alas, Barbers Shop seems to have gone the wrong way. A decent fourth to Denman in the 2009 Hennessy and third in the following month's King George, he was well beaten on all four starts last year and has not been seen since being pulled up in Diamond Harry's Hennessy. If he turns up at the Festival next month, it will be for a handicap hurdle.
We now know that, just four days after Barbers Shop ran in the Gold Cup, Henderson was told of the positive test for tranexamic acid returned by Moonlit Path, also owned by the Queen. Flattering as it must be to have royal patronage, the down side looks pretty daunting if you ever have to break a piece of news quite so appallingly bad as that one.
Henderson must be hoping there would be nothing like a first Gold Cup winner to put the Moonlit Path blues behind him.
