YOU can pick holes in the chances of all three horses who sit at the top of the Gold Cup market. Clan Des Obeaux is the King George winner. He is a progressive seven-year-old, trained by Paul Nicholls,
who appears to be very sweet on his horse’s chances, and who knows a thing or two about training a Gold Cup winner (or two). But the Kapgarde gelding has run at
Cheltenham four times, and he has been beaten four times.

He has run well on occasion, like when he finished second behind Guitar Pete in the December Gold Cup as a five-year-old carrying 11st 12lb, but he would have finished third that day had poor Starchitenct not gone wrong, and even that run was well short of the best of his career.