YOU have to feel for Colin Tizzard and Tom Scudamore and the Thistlecrack team, just as you have to feel for Willie Mullins and the Faugheen/Annie Power team, and for Gordon Elliott and the Don Cossack team. More than the others, however, the Thistlecrack news came from left field. Most of us can only imagine what it feels like to have the Gold Cup favourite carpet whipped from under your feet.

At least Tizzard still has Native River and Cue Card, and Cue Card looked as good as ever when he won the Ascot Chase last Saturday. They say that if he wasn’t an 11-year-old, Cue Card would be favourite for the Gold Cup. That may well be the case, but he is an 11-year-old.

It is difficult to under-estimate the degree to which the Gold Cup is an ageist race. You just don’t get in these days if you are wearing Converse or aged in double figures.

No horse aged 10 or older has won the Gold Cup since Cool Dawn won it in 1998. Some 68 horses aged in double figures have run in the race since the turn of the millennium, and all 68 have been beaten. And they weren’t no-hopers either, 12 of them were sent off at 8/1 or shorter, four of them were sent off as favourite, and Cue Card himself was almost favourite last year as a 10-year-old, a 5/2 shot, second favourite behind the 9/4 winner Don Cossack.

CAREER BEST

You can argue that Cue Card is in the form of his life, that the performance that he put up in winning the Ascot Chase last week is up there with the best of his career, and you would not be far off the mark if you did. However, he is not alone among veteran Gold Cup aspirants in that sense. Kauto Star, Denman, See More Business, Looks Like Trouble, Beef Or Salmon, Cue Card himself last year, they had all shown top form during the season in the lead up to the Gold Cup in which they were beaten.

And Cue Card is not even a 10-year-old, he is a year older than that No horse aged older than 10 has won the Gold Cup since the 12-year-old What A Myth won it in 1969, and no 11-year-old has won it since Mandarin. Mandarin was before Arkle.

Cue Card may well win the Gold Cup, he is an extraordinary 11-year-old after all, but the stats are stacked against him.