For long parts of a dramatic Gold Cup it looked, at least to the untrained eye, like Paul Townend couldn’t do right for doing wrong. Time and again the winning Gold Cup jockey seemed to ride himself and his mount into trouble only for Galopin Des Champs to bail them out.
Detached from the rest of the field in the opening stages, an armchair sage could reasonably have argued that it was only the sluggish pace set by the leaders that allowed them to catch up. Such a view would have flown resolutely in the face of AP McCoy’s post-race analysis, in which he praised Townend for producing “as brilliant a ride as I have ever seen on a racecourse”.
Oblivious to the plaudits of his former colleague, Townend seemed to assess things differently in the aftermath of victory, which suggested that beneath his apparently calm exterior some mid-race nerves had definitely kicked in. “It was messy for me,” he said. “I couldn’t get a clean passage early and he started jumping in the air a little bit but he came back into a rhythm with me and was very, very brave. I think he got me out of a fair hole, to be honest.”
Despite running away with the leading jockeys’ title at this year’s Festival, Townend has not been immune to brickbats and went into the Gold Cup with pressure piled on his slender shoulders and the echoes of criticism for a couple of recent sub-par performances on Facile Vega in the Supreme Novice Hurdle and Appreciate It in the Turners Novice Chase echoing in his ears.
If the opprobrium bothered him, he hid it well and delivered a ride that earned him uncharacteristically effusive praise from the man who had legged him up. “Paul is so good under pressure and I’ve been putting him under some fair pressure this week,” said Willie Mullins. “It was a huge ride from Paul, I thought – ride of the week, anyway.”
While it might seem churlish to mention it at a time of one of their greatest triumphs, Mullins has had occasion to curse Townend even if he did keep his counsel, publicly at least. Five years ago at the Punchestown Festival, the jockey endured the excruciating embarrassment of earning a 21-day ban for careless riding after taking the wrong course on Al Boum Photo in the Champion Novice Chase.
With the race all but won, he famously bypassed the final obstacle, apparently on the orders of a mysterious voice only he among his fellow riders heard.
It was a quite extraordinary aberration which at the time threatened to derail Mullins’ tilt at the trainers’ title and could have prompted the mental disintegration of a less experienced jockey. In a demonstration of the nerve that served him so well on Friday, Townend showed undeniable strength of character to bounce back. Mullins said: “I’m delighted for Paul because it is a tough job and he handles it well and I can be tough too.”
Carlisle 1.50 Tommy’s Oscar 2.25 Wearelongterm 3.00 Imperial Alex 3.35 Sam’s Adventure (nap) 4.10 Maid O’Malley 4.45 Serious Ego 5.20 Time Leader
Chepstow 1.30 L’Astroboy 2.05 Dentley De Mee (nb) 2.40 Shomen Uchi 3.15 Marada 3.50 Sail Away 4.25 Bells of Stamford 5.00 King William Rufus
Flagged up as a potential superstar in the build-up to the Gold Cup, it had been suggested that like his rider, Galopin Des Champs might also be prone to the occasional gaffe. Last year he knuckled on landing and fell at the last with the Turners Novice Chase at his mercy, a mental lapse he left far behind him along with his Gold Cup rivals as he pulled clear up the steep Cheltenham run-in a year on.
While Mullins was not prepared to rank this Gold Cup win over his previous triumphs with the aforementioned Al Boum Photo, Galopin Des Champs prevailed in a field of the absolute highest quality, winning by seven lengths. Not since the years when stablemates Kauto Star and Denman were trading blows and titles had such an exceptional field assembled and it was their trainer Paul Nicholls who sent out Bravemansgame to follow the winner home as the others at the business end of the betting succumbed to the relentless gallop one by one.
Watching in the parade ring, his faith in the Festival and his own ability to compete at it restored on the back of two trips to the winners’ enclosure after an extended hiatus dating back to 2020, Nicholls could not contain himself as the leading pair jumped the last. With Bravemansgame upsides Galopin Des Champs he allowed himself a celebratory jig and air-punch, only to visibly deflate as the eventual winner quickly pulled clear. Mullins tends to have that effect on his British peers in a Cheltenham fiefdom he has increasingly made his own.
