PAUL Townend felt the power surging through him as he loomed outside a frantically animated Sam Ewing and Conflated, and determined that the time was right to loosen just the tiniest bit of rein. It was more than enough.

In the blink of an eye, the Savills Chase was over. In the process, Galopin Des Champs put to bed any doubts about his enduring ability following two Punchestown defeats, the third-place finish in the John Durkan Chase won by Punchestown Gold Cup victor, Fastorslow having caused most concern on seasonal debut in October due to a number of jumping errors.

By taking it up at the turn for home and sprinting up the straight to a 23-length demolition over a field packed with Grade 1 winners at Leopardstown, he also illustrated that he was at least as good as ever before. Maybe even better. Townend won his third Cheltenham Gold Cup on board Audrey Turley’s son of Timos and always retained the faith. Still, he knew he was on a different animal down at the start at Leopardstown to what had turned up down the road in Kildare a couple of months previously. The chest was out. Galopin was telling everyone, including the man in the plate, that the sheriff was in town.

And while he wasn’t foot-perfect, his fencing was unrecognisably better. After two obstacles, you knew you were looking at the hero of last term. He proved it again in the Irish Gold Cup in February.

There are challengers to the Willie Mullins-trained behemoth, headed by the aforementioned Fastorslow, conditioned so expertly by Martin Brassil for Bernardine and Seán Mulryan. But right now, Galopin Des Champs is expected to be the first horse since his former stablemate, Al Boum Photo in 2020 to go back-to-back in the blue riband of National Hunt racing.

Comparisons

Since Christmas, there have been comparisons with Kauto Star, another dual Gold Cup hero who also won five King George VI Chases, the first of those coming three weeks after galloping to success in the Tingle Creek over two miles.

Comparing ratings from different eras is clearly no way to attempt to arrive at a determination in regard to such comparisons. It makes more sense to speak to people that know what it’s like to scale the highest peak of jump racing and understand how difficult it is to repeat.

Unless you’re Henrietta Knight of course, the trainer of Best Mate, who oversaw the 2002-2004 three-peat and returned to the fold last month after an absence of more than 11 years.

Our other three contributors are jockeys. Ruby Walsh was on board when Kauto Star rocked and rolled and remains a key cog in the machine priming Galopin Des Champs for his tilt at glory.

Davy Russell enjoyed his golden moment in 2014 with a ballsy display of pace judgement on Lord Windermere, trained by Best Mate’s regular pilot, Jim Culloty, and has also ridden against Galopin Des Champs, Kauto Star and Best Mate.

Russell actually rode a treble that day, despite starting out with only the Gold Cup engagement, picking up two spares - including on the horse he would later propel to legendary status by landing two Grand Nationals, Tiger Roll - due to the horrific broken leg suffered by his successor as retained rider to Gigginstown House Stud, Bryan Cooper.

Cooper recovered and would add his name to the annals two years later by navigating the tricky Prestbury Park arena expertly on Don Cossack.

Unfortunately, injury prevented the talented Sholokhov gelding, conditioned by Gordon Elliott, from running again.

Won another

“I still firmly think Don Cossack could have come back and won another Gold Cup,” says Cooper. “They have to go do it but he won so well that year, he bolted up. I didn’t even hit him a belt of the stick.

“There are people saying Cue Card would have bet him (had he not fallen three from home). It wouldn’t have happened.”

The Tralee native maintains that “real Gold Cups” are very difficult back up. By that, he is referring to renewals that are searching examinations of physical and mental endurance, and brook no doubt about who the best horse is. It is a common theme among our contributors.

“When there’s a bunch of them turning into the straight, they’re not truly run Gold Cups. The real truly run Gold Cups are when there’s probably only four or five in contention going down to the last. They’re spread out like the washing and that’s the sign that it’s been an end-to-end gallop.

“Take nothing away from Al Boum Photo, but I remember the second year he won it, there was about 12 of them in a bunch turning into the straight. And maybe he didn’t have such a hard race the first year and he was able to come back.

“I think the real sign of a proper Gold Cup is how strung out they are and if you look at last year, there were only two of them pulled clear from the back of the third-last.”

Rarity

Russell points to the mileage already on the clock by the time a Gold Cup has been garnered as a salient factor in explaining the rarity of two-time winners.

“You have to have a huge amount done before you get to a Gold Cup anyway,” Russell begins. “The horses have a bumper career, a novice hurdle career, a novice chasing career and then a senior career. They’re four years into their racing life anyway.

“Then they have to win their first Gold Cup at a young age, which isn’t easy.

“So you’re knocking horses that could do it off the list as you go along. Before you even start to get a repeat performance, you have to have had a light enough campaign, have an awful lot of ability and be the right age to go again for another two or three years.

“And it’s not like you’re dealing with the same lads year-on-year. There’s the young horses coming through every year that makes it so difficult. It takes an extraordinary horse to do it and there’s not many extraordinary horses out there.”

Walsh concurs. “When you go deep into the reserves of any athlete, how many progress?” comes his rhetorical query. “Where Al Boum Photo got slightly lucky is that his first Gold Cup was the rare one, in sort of 12 or 14 years, run slowly. Most Gold Cups are run quite close to Champion Chase speed only they go for an extra mile and a quarter.

“It backs up how talented a horse Best Mate was but ultimately, he didn’t run enough to become a great horse.”

Knight, as Best Mate’s handler, has heard this sentiment often enough and doesn’t agree with it. Her star raced four times in his first Gold Cup-winning season and three in the subsequent campaigns, taking in what is now the Savills Chase at Leopardstown in December 2003 ahead of completing the three-in-row last achieved by Arkle in 1966.

“I think it’s like the athletes in the Olympics,” Knight opines. “You’ll get some of those brilliant sprinters like Bolt, who do it year-in, year-out, but on the whole, there’s a hell of a lot more pressure on the individual on those days than any other day because of the training, to get to the peak.

Wrapped up

“I don’t think people appreciate it with the horses, they think they just turn up and do their stuff. Why else are none of these trainers running their horses nowadays? They used to say I wrapped up Best Mate in cotton wool, that I hardly ran him… now, take for example Constitution Hill, he’s going to have one run before Cheltenham!”

Unprompted, in a conversation that has taken place before the one with Knight, Russell brings up the popular Best Mate narrative. The Youghal man was a nine-length second on the admirable Truckers Tavern in the 2003 Gold Cup.

“Henrietta Knight got awful stick that she didn’t run Best Mate enough during the year but she was ahead of her time. She knew what she was doing.

“She wanted to win a couple of Gold Cups, so something has to give. Now, they’re saying it about Nicky Henderson with Constitution Hill. They’re giving out that they don’t see enough of him but if he doesn’t win three Champion Hurdles, he’s not what everybody says or thinks he is!”

One senses Knight smiling at the other end of the line as I inform her of Russell’s comments.

“Funny enough, I rather like to think that I was ahead of the game,” the boss of West Lockinge Farm offers.

“It’s very, very simple. If you’ve got a target, you plan for that target. You have to have a horse that comes along and helps you and a horse that fits into the regime you’re adopting. Remember, Willie Mullins only ran Al Boum Photo the once before Cheltenham each year, in Tramore.”

What is certain is that horses are being trained differently now. They may be fitter but perhaps more is demanded of them to reach those levels.

Which is why plenty wondered if those demands, allied with meeting every new challenge on the track right up to a scintillating display in the shadow of the Cotswolds last March, had dulled Galopin Des Champs’ appetite for battle. The Savills provided a decisive riposte and now, parallels with Kauto Star are being drawn.

“When I was a kid, 14 or 15, when Kauto and Denman were doing what they did, I used to ride the finishes on the back of the couch,” Cooper reveals. “Some of the rides Ruby gave Kauto – and the blunders he used to make! I was watching some of them recently. He halved fences!

“In one of his King Georges, it was the fifth-last I think, he met it with his head and he still came back out on the bridle after it. That would finish some horses.

“For me, Galopin will have to go do it and do it well to be compared to him, but he could do so after what I saw in Leopardstown. There was a wow factor. I’ve never seen a horse quicken up the straight like that after three miles in Leopardstown. Ever.

“He’s just a tremendous horse. He stays, he jumps. Okay, (the John Durkan) wasn’t ideal for him but it was the only poor run he put in in his life. They all do it, even Kauto Star. I just think he’s got everything… if he shows up the way he did last year, I can’t see anything getting near him.

“I’d bet you – maybe not now – but last year or when he was a novice definitely, Galopin Des Champs would have won over two miles (as Kauto Star did). The year he came down so unluckily at the last in the Turners at Cheltenham, I’d say he’d have won the Arkle that year but they were training him to be a Gold Cup horse.

“The man that rides him, Adam Connolly deserves an award himself. No one else rides the horse. Adam is quite strong, he’s not a jockey, but between himself, Willie and the lads, they’ve turned the horse inside out, got him to settle and save his energy. Adam has had a big role in that.”

Phenomenal horse

“We didn’t know what we had until he was gone,” declares Russell in relation to the Paul Nicholls-prepped goliath. “He was a phenomenal horse, what he was able to do, and you’d have to hail the training performance that went with it.

“There’s no doubt Galopin is the likeliest winner of the Gold Cup but the only thing is, I personally think he needs conditions at his favour to be at his very best. It seems to me that he needs plenty of juice in the ground for him to be at his best.”

Knight’s verdict is unequivocally in favour of Galopin Des Champs already.

“I love him,” gushes the woman described by Best Mate’s late owner, Jim Lewis as a weaver of dreams. “I’ll probably be killed by the Nicholls camp but I actually much prefer him to Kauto Star. I know Kauto Star got all his credit for all the times he turned up and did those various things, winning five King Georges and the two Gold Cups at Cheltenham.

“He was in the public eye more often and he was out there on the racecourse. He made a good few errors in his career though, didn’t he?

“I love Galopin Des Champs. I think he’s absolutely gorgeous and like him very much as a horse. I was worried when I saw him return at Punchestown this year and thought it was not the same horse we saw last year. But he was right back at Leopardstown… he had the whole enthusiasm at Leopardstown. The fire was burning again, wasn’t it?

“He might end up winning three Gold Cups. I know the horse quite well ‘cos last year I saw him a lot when I was down at Willie’s. He wouldn’t have a lot in common with Best Mate, not physically. But he’s a lovely stamp of horse. I love the way he looks. Put it this way, if I was able to train him, I’d be very happy.

“I can’t see what could beat him.”

Bloody nose

Endurance and regularly pitching up for a fight, even if you suffer the odd bloody nose along the way, are the requirements for greatness in Walsh’s eyes however, and so the Kill great argues that Galopin Des Champs will have more to do to be ranked among the equine icons of the sport, even if he provides Mullins and Townend with a fourth Gold Cup.

“Best Mate became a triple Gold Cup winner who’s not spoken anywhere near what Arkle is. He’s not even spoken above Kauto Star, who only one two, because Kauto won five King Georges.

“Henrietta was very good with Best Mate, she won three Gold Cups with him, but did she maximise him for the betterment of racing? Probably not.

“Don’t mind (Kauto) losing (to Denman in 2008). It was the fact he turned up. Paul Nicholls ran him. He was an athlete who participated. I know I was riding him but he turned up in Down Royal, in Haydock, in Kempton. He was at the Aon, or the Ascot Chase or wherever he was. He came to Punchestown. He was there for people to see.

“Great is winning races. Great is longevity. Great is not a figure. It’s something we’re hung up on in this sport. What’s his rating? Who gives a f*ck what his rating is? He’s not running in a handicap.

“I couldn’t care what Timeform rate him or what the handicapper rates him. He’s not running in a handicap. Who cares?

“What did he win? How many races did he win? How many times did we see him? How many horses did he beat?

“Alex Ferguson is not rated (as a manager) on how good his best team was. It’s how many Premierships he won. Champions Leagues. FA Cups. Every sport is the same. How many of something. A.P. McCoy is the greatest because he won 20 champion jockey titles. 20. Not because they were rating him 190.

“My point is greatness comes through racing, it doesn’t come through ratings. Un De Sceaux was a great horse because he ran, Hurricane Fly was a great horse, Big Buck’s was a great horse because they ran.

“The moving of the John Durkan got Galopin to the Savills. You then get the Irish Gold Cup, Cheltenham and back to Punchestown. That’s what you want. You want to see him five times a year and if he can go and run in those five races for last year, this year, next year and the year after, that’s how you become a great horse.

“It’s not one, sporadic, massive performance. That’s only brilliance, not greatness.”

Over to you Galopin. And Team Closutton.