There have been some remarkable races in Cheltenham Festival history but none more mind-boggling than the Unibet Champion Hurdle ultimately won by Golden Ace on Tuesday.
The 25-1 outsider, running in the race only because her owner insisted on it, somehow scooped championship glory in a race that didn’t so much defy expectations as crush them to a pulp.
Constitution Hill’s dramatic fall at the fifth flight left the previously raucously expectant festival crowd stunned.
The previously unbeaten star, rated one of the all-time hurdling greats, had been cruising in behind his market danger Brighterdaysahead and jumping with a fluency that justified sustained market support until crashing out.
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The horrible second it took for him to thankfully scramble to his feet and run off unscathed represented an almost physical expression of dread around the course and beyond.
Any presumption that it would leave Brighterdaysahead to pick up the pieces proved hopelessly misplaced.
The almost forgotten reigning champion State Man cruised up behind her down the hill and left the field in his wake on the run to the last.
All was set for sweet vindication for Willie Mullins, who’d copped significant flak for not running Lossiemouth in the Champion, instead running her in the easier Close Bros Mares' Hurdle 40 minutes earlier, a race the 4-6 favourite duly won in a rout.
Second-guessing the sport’s most successful ever figure once again looked an embarrassingly presumptive exercise. Except this wasn’t any kind of conclusive contest.
State Man stood off the final flight and came down, similar to Annie Power’s infamous exit a decade ago. Paul Townend went for a big jump and didn’t get it. As State Man too clambered to his feet, he clattered into a beaten Brighterdaysahead in chaotic scenes.
By then the unheralded Golden Ace and jockey Lorcan Williams had got into pole position and the mare came up the hill to beat the 66-1 outsider Burdett Road by nine lengths, with the 150-1 Mullins outsider Winter Fog in third.
Maybe Nortons Coin’s legendary 100-1 Gold Cup shock in 1990 left the festival similarly dumbfounded. But as a chain of events this took topping.
Golden Ace’s trainer Jeremy Scott had wanted to emulate Mullins and go for the Mares, only for owner Ian Gosden to insist on the big one.
Rarely if ever has such pluck got more spectacularly rewarded on a racecourse. Even if the fates majorly intervened, the contrast to the cautious route taken by the Lossiemouth team was obvious to everyone.
Scott, who trains about 35 horses in Somerset, and who prepared Golden Ace to beat Brighterdaysahead at last year’s festival, held his hands up about the final decision on what race to run in.
“We were definitely at two slight variations of opinion going into this. But he pays the bills and, as Del Boy says, ‘Who Dares Wins, Rodney!’” he joked.
Williams’s professional instincts had also been directed towards the Mares, too, but he admitted: “I’m not complaining now. Ian’s bravery has been rewarded.
“When Constitution Hill was out of the race, I thought we might stay on for second. And then when State Man fell at the last, we were there to pick up the pieces, which was the game plan. It’s the best day of my life.”
The two most successful trainers in festival history were left scratching their heads at an astonishing chain of events.
“We’ve known last-hurdle falls here before. We’re used to it at this stage,” Mullins said. “He was just long at it and popped the top of it, but these things happen.”
Constitution Hill’s trainer Nicky Henderson was notably philosophical – “Nobody’s hurt. We have two jockeys who are fine and two horses who are fine. Surely there’ll be a rather fun day in Punchestown now!”
Brighterdaysahead could finish only fourth and Gordon Elliott said: “Jack [Kennedy] said she never picked up for him at all and she normally picks up. He said she whinnied crossing the line as well so that would be a worry. So we will have to get her checked out and see how she is.”
