As one tilt at racing immortality came up short, another even more elusive achievement suddenly came into sharp focus as Inothewayurthinkin, in the famous green and gold colors of JP McManus, powered away from Galopin Des Champs, the defending two-time champion, to win the Cheltenham Gold Cup by six lengths.
There are still just four horses with three Gold Cup victories to their name, and there is still just one — Golden Miller, who features on both lists — who has won the Gold Cup and the Grand National in the same season, 91 years ago in 1934.
However, within a month there could be two, if McManus and Gavin Cromwell, Inothewayurthinkin’s trainer, decide that the seven-year-old has come out of Friday’s race well enough to take his place in the 34-strong field at Aintree on April 5.
Photo: AFP
McManus was understandably cautious about the possibility of Inothewayurthinkin going to Liverpool as he savored his latest Gold Cup success, and referenced the fact that Synchronised, his only previous winner of this race, received a fatal injury while galloping loose in the National in 2012, a few weeks after his Gold Cup success.
He also experienced the painful loss of Corbetts Cross in Friday’s race, in a fall at the second last. “We have to be fair to the horse,” McManus said. “The Gold Cup is a tough race. I’ll see what Gavin says, but don’t expect a decision in the next week.”
Aintree is a very different challenge these days — there were no fallers at all in last season’s National — and McManus is also the greatest enthusiast for jump racing that the sport has seen in recent decades.
Photo: Reuters
He would need no reminding of the historic achievement that is now within Inothewayurthinkin’s grasp, or of the fact that his horse, already the 7-1 favorite for the Grand National before Friday’s race, is now about 3-1 to complete jumping’s most elusive double.
McManus, whose tilts at the betting have long been the stuff of festival legend, told an interviewer recently that he does not gamble as much these days, not least because it is ever more difficult to get his money down.
He said he enjoyed the return from a different kind of gamble here, as Inothewayurthinkin, a handicap chase winner at this meeting last year, was not among the original entries for the Gold Cup and only joined the field thanks to a ￡25,000 (US$32,357) supplementary entry after Cromwell advised the owner that his horse was flying on the gallops and it might be a good idea.
Photo: Reuters
McManus backed Cromwell’s judgment, and welcomed back his second Gold Cup winner as a result, thanks to a confident ride by Mark Walsh and perhaps a slightly below-par run by Galopin Des Champs.
The odds-on favorite had finished about seven lengths in front of Inothewayurthinkin in the Irish Gold Cup at Leopardstown last year, but was rarely travelling or jumping with his usual fluency here and could not respond as Walsh sent the winner into the lead between the final two fences.
A good jump at the last sealed his success and Inothewayurthinkin crossed the line as a ready winner with something left in the tank.
There is of course no such thing as an easy race in the Gold Cup and Inothewayurthinkin would be the subject of the closest scrutiny at Cromwell’s yard in the days ahead, looking for any hint that he has done enough for now.
“Galopin Des Champs was a dual Gold Cup winner, but we were coming here to try and win the race,” Cromwell said. “We weren’t coming to pick up the pieces and get place money.”
“Probably it was my fault that he wasn’t entered in the race because I thought it was going to come too soon in his career and we’d be better waiting for next year,” Cromwell said.
He went to the Dublin Racing festival [in February] and ran such a big race, and he’s come forward since that,” he said.
He added of the Grand National: “I think we’ll all catch our breath and get the horse home, and we’ll be having the conversation later on, but I suppose you certainly can’t rule it out and it is tempting. It’s certainly something to think about.”
Meanwhile, McManus was able to reflect on an unlikely sequence of events that had taken him to the Gold Cup winner’s enclosure once again.
“He’s by Walk In The Park, and as a yearling, Charles O’Brien bought him [Walk In The Park] for ourselves and he failed the [vet’s] test afterwards,” McManus said.
“Then he went on to be second in the Derby for someone else, and if I’d got him, he’d have been gelded and I’d have no Gold Cup winner, so the Lord works in mysterious ways,” he said.
NO HARD FEELINGS: Taiwan’s Lin Hsiang-ti and Indonesia’s Dhinda Amartya Pratiwi embraced after fighting to a tense and rare 30-29 final game in their Uber Cup match The Taiwanese men’s team on Wednesday fought back from the brink of elimination to defeat Denmark in Group C and advance to the quarter-finals of the Thomas Cup, while the women’s team were to face South Korea after press time last night in the Uber Cup quarter-finals in Horsens, Denmark. In the first match, Taiwan’s top shuttler Chou Tien-chen faced a familiar opponent in world No. 3 Anders Antonsen. It was their 16th head-to-head matchup, with the Dane taking his fourth victory in a row against former world No. 2 Chou, winning 21-14, 13-21, 21-15 in 1 hour, 22 minutes. The
Marta Kostyuk’s maiden WTA 1000 title in Madrid came on Saturday thanks to her power, poise and a pair of unexpected lucky shorts. The world No. 23 beat eighth-ranked Mirra Andreeva 6-3, 7-5 in under 90 minutes to secure the most prestigious trophy of her career, her third professional singles title and second in less than a month after Rouen. Yet as the 23-year-old Ukrainian posed for photographs at the Caja Magica, it was not just the silverware that caught the eye. Held alongside her team and her two dogs, Kostyuk showed off a piece of black men’s underwear, prompting
Throwing more than US$5 billion at a divisive new tour and walking away after five seasons does not look like good business, but LIV Golf was not all bad news for Saudi Arabia. Oil-funded LIV, which poached top stars and sent golf’s establishment into a tailspin, helped push the conservative kingdom into global view — one of its key aims, experts said. The exit, confirmed on Thursday after weeks of speculation, does not signal a flight of Saudi money from sport, even after the Middle East war that sparked Iranian attacks around the Gulf, they said. “Saudi Arabia is not
Anastasia Potapova on Wednesday turned tennis heartbreak into history by becoming the first lucky loser to reach a WTA 1000 semi-final with her thrilling 6-1, 6-7 (4/7), 6-3 victory over Karolina Pliskova at the Madrid Open, as Taiwan’s Hsieh Su-wei exited in the women’s doubles quarter-finals. The Russian-born Austrian, who lost in qualifying last week, has capitalized on her unexpected main draw entry and stunned former world No. 1 Pliskova in a roller-coaster clash despite squandering three match points. Potapova’s run has included impressive victories over former French Open champion Jelena Ostapenko and world No. 2 Elena Rybakina. Asked if she had thought
RSS