The deepest affections of racing folk tread delicately between joy and despair. Seldom will that line seem finer than this afternoon, when Kauto Star emerges to run in his sixth Betfred Cheltenham Gold Cup, striving to win back the crown for a second time at the age of 12.
These things are not supposed to happen. The champions of this sport, challenging in its intensity, tend to be fleeting. They do not get off the canvas to win again, as Kauto Star has already done, and they generally lose their zest long before his age.
Kauto Star is a freak of endurance and excellence, which is one reason people love him. Another is his personality — inquisitive, cocky and friendly. Then there is his jumping, which initially teased in its bulldozing indifference to a final fence, but has become steadily more majestic in maturity.
Kauto Star will arrive at Prestbury Park today as the most popular horse in the land — the most popular, indeed, since Desert Orchid, more than two decades ago. And that brings with it not only colour and clamour and mass adulation but also an unstated dread.
Nobody wants this fantastic journey to end badly, either through unaccustomed failure or, heaven forbid, physical harm. It is the elephant in the room that has haunted Kauto Star’s dedicated connections in a doubt-ridden preparation.
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You do not get the privilege of laps of honour at the Festival. This is a sporting arena for athletic splendour and iron will, for courage to meet every challenge. Kauto Star has had all such requirements in bucketloads. Today, his army of fans must pray that none has deserted him.
There has been no sign of it this season. Indeed, Kauto Star has been rejuvenated from the apparently ailing beast of a year ago. His victories over Long Run at Haydock Park and Kempton Park were electrifying. Ruby Walsh, his jockey, reckons he has only once felt him in better form than at Christmas, when he landed a fifth King George VI Chase victory.
But now comes a return to Cheltenham, where he fell heavily two years ago and where there are no sanctuaries. Even those closest to him cannot be certain he will reproduce his midwinter form once more.
Paul Nicholls, whose training of the horse over the past eight years has been parental in its care and devotion, is only too aware of the pitfalls of this final bid for glory. He weighed it up when correctly judging Kauto Star retained the relish for another competitive season and he was obliged to revisit the conundrum when the horse suffered a bruising fall in his schooling ring three weeks ago.
In the days that followed, there were times when Nicholls surveyed the contrasting possibilities of this Gold Cup and wondered if it might be a mercy if Kauto Star was withdrawn. “There would be a lot less pressure,” he mused. But then, for the umpteenth time in a life that could support a film, this extraordinary horse surprised him with his powers of recovery.
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Naturally, appearances may deceive. The wellbeing of Nicholls’s team remains open to question after an outbreak of coughing and a number of disappointments this week. Even his Champion Hurdle victor, Rock On Ruby, is no indicator, being trained in a satellite yard 25 miles from the main base at Ditcheat.
Kauto Star has never visited that yard, never moved from the prime corner stable where he conducts his high-spirited observation of all who come and go. It is a two-way thing. Up above, Nicholls’s office desk looks down directly on his favourite horse.
“I know we always have to move on,” he reflected this week. “When See More Business finished, I thought we would be in trouble and it will be the same with Kauto. But it will feel very strange when he’s not there any more.”
That we have progressed this far in a Gold Cup preview without mentioning the title defender says everything about the subject matter. Long Run and the Waley-Cohen family was a wonderful, Corinthian story last year. Time may prove him to be an outstanding champion. But for now, perversely, he is cast as the pantomime villain of a race founded on memories and emotion.
Nicky Henderson, his trainer, has conquered all this week but he knows his role in the Festival highlight. “If Long Run wins again, I expect to be sitting alone in a corner feeling the most unpopular man in the Cotswolds,” he said.
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Nicholls has been diplomatically astute this week, seeking to deflect attention from the supposed decider in a duel that stands at 2-2. “We’ve seen before it is a mistake to turn a Gold Cup into a two-horse race,” he said.
He is right, of course. Burton Port, also trained by Henderson, may spoil the script, or maybe Weird Al or even Quel Esprit, if your imagination stretches that far. Yet to thousands who will throng the parade ring in their green and yellow scarves and hats today, it is not about two horses, but just one.
Kauto Star has captivated the public in a way that few horses have achieved. It is an appeal that crosses generations. At 7am in a Cheltenham newsagent yesterday, I encountered a small figure in a Kauto Star polo shirt and hat. He could not have been more than 15.
With this unswerving support comes the fear of a sorry conclusion. Just to run in six Gold Cups is a triumph of constitution. No horse before Kauto Star had lost the crown and won it back. Now, like Muhammad Ali, he seeks to reclaim it a second time at an age when most such pugilists are retired.
History deems it improbable. Kauto Star is two years older than any Gold Cup winner since 1969. But then history, to this horse, is just another story that needs rewriting. Let it not end in tears.
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