Category: Horses

The Grand National was inaugurated in 1839, while the Cheltenham Gold Cup wasn’t run, as a steeplechase, until 1924 but, in more than nine decades, only one horse has won both races in the same season. That horse was Golden Miller, who reigned supreme in the interwar years and, in 1934, won the two premium steeplechases in the country within the space of 17 days. Fresh from a 6-length victory over Avenger in the Cheltenham Gold Cup – his third in as many years – “The Miller” was involved in a thrilling struggle with Delaneige, who was receiving 10lb, throughout the last half mile at Aintree, but drew away in the closing stages to win by 5 lengths in record time.

 

Golden Miller would go on to win the Cheltenham Gold Cup again in 1935, and 1936, to become the most successful horse in the history of the Blue Riband event, but would fail to win the Grand National again in three subsequent attempts. In fact, as defending champion, in 1935, he started the shortest-priced favourite in the history of the Grand National, at Racing Odds of 2/1, but jumped awkwardly at the tenth fence and deposited jockey Gerry Wilson on the turf alongside the Leeds and Liverpool Canal.

 

Golden Miller was owned by the Honourable Dorothy Paget, the daughter of a British aristocrat, but a notoriously difficult and, often, madly eccentric, individual. Following the 1935 Grand National, Miss Paget lost patience with trainer Basil Briscoe and moved Golden Miller to Owen Anthony. However, by way of absolving his former trainer and jockey from any blame, Golden Miller fell at the Canal Turn on the first circuit in the 1936 Grand National and refused at the same tenth fence in the 1937 Grand National.

 

Golden Miller died in 1957, but is commemorated by a statue overlooking the parade ring at Prestbury Park.

According to Timeform – notwithstanding the highly questionable, exaggerated ratings awarded to Arkle and Flyingbolt – Kauto Star was the joint fifth-best steeplechaser since the early 1960s, rated alongside fellow Cheltenham Gold Cup winner Mill House and just 1lb inferior to dual Queen Mother Champion Chase winner Sprinter Sacre.

 

Trained by Paul Nicholls at Manor Farm Stables in Ditcheat, Somerset and ridden, for most of his career, by Ruby Walsh, Kauto Star won 23 of his 41 races – including 19 of his 31 steeplechases – and over £2.3 million in win and place prize money. He famously won the King George VI Chase at Kempton a record five times, in 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2011, and the Cheltenham Gold Cup twice, in 2007 and 2009. In fact, his impressive 13-length victory over stable companion Denman in 2009 – having finished second to the same horse the previous year – made him the first horse to regain the Cheltenham Gold Cup.

 

All in all, Kauto Star won 16 Grade 1 steeplechases, over distances ranging from 1 mile 7½ furlongs to 3 miles 2½ furlongs, during a brilliant career and is rightly remembered as one of the finest racehorses of all time. On his retirement from racing in 2012, owner Clive Smith announced at a press conference in London that Kauto Star would be moved to the Berkshire stables of professional event rider Laura Collett, without informing his former trainer Paul Nicholls. The move led to an acrimonious split between Nicholls and Smith, with Nicholls saying, “I can’t see that [any further Smith-owned horses in the yard] happening”.

 

Kauto Star demonstrated his new dressage skills a few times, including at the London International Horse Show at Olympia in December, 2014, but six months later was injured in a fall at home. He suffered complications resulting from neck and pelvic injuries and was humanely euthanised in June, 2015.

Man o’War was far and away the most successful racehorse of his generation and, arguably, one of the greatest racehorses of all time. In fact, according to panel of experts assembled by the Associated Press, he was voted the greatest horse of the twentieth century, ahead of Secretariat and Citation.

 

Bred by August Belmont II, owned by Samuel D. Riddle and trained by Louis Feustel, won nine of his 10 starts as a juvenile in 1919. His sole defeat came in the Sanford Memorial Stakes at Saratoga, at the hands of the aptly-named Upset, whom he had beaten on six previous occasions, but owed more to the ineptitude of the acting starter than anything else. In the absence of starting stalls, after several false starts the runners were sent on their way before all of them, including Man o’War, were ready. Man o’War was eventually beaten a neck, conceding 15lb to the winner, but as Fred Van Ness of the New York Times reported, “There was scarcely a witness of this race who did not believe after it was all over that Man o’ War would have walked home, with anything like a fair chance.”

 

Man o’War was never beaten again. He didn’t run in the Kentucky Derby because his owner considered believed that a mile and a quarter was too far for a three-year-old at that early stage of his career. He did, however, run in, and win, the Preakness Stakes and the Belmont Stakes – which would become the second and third legs of the “Triple Crown”, although the phrase wasn’t coined until a decade later – in 1920. In the Preakness Stakes, he beat the aforementioned Upset by 1½ lengths and, in the Belmont Stakes, beat sole rival Donnaconna by 20 lengths, setting a new world record for a mile and three furlongs in the process.

 

Man o’War faced older horses or, rather, an older horse, just once. On his final start, he faced Sir Barton, who’d won the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness Stakes and the Belmont Stakes in 1919, in a match race for the Kenilworth Park Gold Cup at Windsor, Ontario. Man o’War won by 7 lengths, taking his career record to 20 wins from 21 starts and lifetime earnings to just under $250,000.