AS the euphoria of the Gold Cup dies down there follows another championship race and, although it does not carry any grade or listed status, it is somewhat, surprisingly, regularly one of the top 10 betting races for turnover of the calendar year.

Last year the Victoria Pendelton dimension gave it added public interest but in an ordinary year punters seem to want to either roll up their winnings or recoup their losses from the previous race and to many, the Foxhunter seems to offer the perfect opportunity.

This year, the race has special interest to those of us with a passion in point-to-point and hunter chase racing. No horse has ever won the Cheltenham Foxhunter three times, let alone in succession, but On The Fringe bids to do so next Friday. In fact only six other horses have won this particular race twice, so already he holds a high position in the ranks of those that have succeeded.

Between 1956 and 1962 three horses won the race twice. Two of those would have to be rated among the very best of all time and the third would not be far behind them.

Of course, from its inception in 1908, the race was originally run over four miles at the spring (April) meeting. In 1912 it was moved to the festival meeting, then in its second year, and was run over the same course as the National Hunt Chase, which was then the most important race on the festival programme.

This course was used until 1964 and there were 24 fences, none of which were jumped twice, and involved the horses running on an outer circuit which took them close to the railway station and round the back of the stands over land which is now used for car parks. So one can see that it was a very different race then.

From 1965 the two races were brought back in to the existing courses and in 1978 the Foxhunter was reduced in distance to its present three and a quarter miles.

The first horse to win the Foxhunter twice was The Callant, a modestly-bred fleabitten grey who came up through the point-to-point ranks to dominate the hunter chase scene in 1956 and ’57. Not only was he in his element on the racecourse, he also carried his owner/breeder Charlie Scott as whipper-in to the Jed Forest hounds. He frequently put in over 20 full days of hunting in a season and was ridden by almost every member of his owner’s extended family.

In his second victory he beat a young horse called College Master into second place. Such was the quality of these two horses that the correspondence columns of the racing press saw writers expressing the view that either of them, had they been entered, would have won that year’s Gold Cup, which had been won by Linwell, himself a former point-to-pointer.

The Callant was strongly fancied to win the Whitbread Gold Cup at Sandown later that season but uncharacteristically fell. That run effectively ruled him out of hunt racing for the next season, and although he won three decent handicap chases, the hunting field was his real home.

EVENTER

College Master was bought as an unraced five-year-old at Ascot sales by the Australian three-day event rider Lawrence Morgan and that year competed in several one-day horse trials. He was offered to the Australian National team for the 1956 Olympics, and indeed he was entered for Badminton that year, but the offer was not taken.

With that option gone, Lawrie, as he was known in hunt racing circles, took him point-to-pointing and the pair showed their quality with four wins in that season. After the defeat at Cheltenham in 1957 the pair triumphed at Aintree in Liverpool’s Fox Hunters. Lawrie went back to Australia to look after his sheep farm and leased the horse for the next two years to his friend Bill Shepherd, who had always boarded the gelding.

In 1958, College Master finished fourth to the new star of hunter chasing, Whinstone Hill, at Cheltenham. Another from the Boarder Country, he did most of his racing in the north of England but really enjoyed himself in the Foxhunter.

Having won once he came as favourite the next year but College Master was no push over and the two came to the last together, clear of the rest, only to fall independently on opposite sides of the fence. Had either of them stood up, we wouldn’t still be waiting for over first three-time winner.

Whinstone Hill returned in 1960 for a second win but College Master lost his form and did not race that year. However, Lawrie Morgan was back for the Rome Olympic Games, where he won both team and individual gold medals on Salad Days in the three-day event.

Reunited with his owner, College Master was virtually invincible in 1961 winning at both Cheltenham and Liverpool and in 1962 they won their second Cheltenham Foxhunter at the horse’s age of 12 for a truly remarkable career record.

It is quite likely that he would have won more had his owner not been based in Australia, for in truth, although all the top amateurs of the day got the chance to ride him, he only really produced his best for Lawrie.

It was not until 1993 and 1994 that another double winner appeared at Cheltenham. The West Country gelding Double Silk proved himself to rank with the best with two comfortable wins in the hands of Ron Treloggan. The pair also won at Aintree in 1993.

Earth Mover won his first Foxhunter in 1998 but it was not until 2004 that he triumphed again an unusually long interval between two such wins; even his greatest fans would not consider him to have been a vintage winner.

ON THE FRINGE

Since then we have to come to the present decade to find two Irish horses completing the double, Salsify in 2012 and ’13 and now On The Fringe in the last two seasons.

At present, there are four top-rank hunter chases – Cheltenham, Liverpool, Punchestown and Stratford and, as of yet, no horse has won all four. On The Fringe has won three of them in each of the past two years, though he has not attempted the Stratford race.

Since Irish horses have only been readmitted to the Cheltenham and Aintree races since the late 1970s and British horses to Punchestown some years later, it is fair to recall that Chris Collins’ former champion Credit Call had wins at Cheltenham, Liverpool (three times), Stratford (four times) and at Fairyhouse, then the only Irish hunter chase open to British runners.

There are many other great horses with their names on the Cheltenham trophy such as Halloween, Spartan Missile and Grittar, so On The Fringe is already in great company. If he can win again, he will have carved a niche of his own.