Energumene was a comfortable winner of the Champion Chase at Cheltenham as Shiskin completely failed to fire, denying racing fans the most hotly anticipated head-to-head battle of the week.
Shishkin, trained by Nicky Henderson, jumped off as the odds-on favourite for the feature race on day two of the festival but never looked comfortable under Nico de Boinville and was pulled up early in the race.
That left the remainder of a small field to battle it out and it was Energumene, narrowly beaten by Shiskin when they met at Ascot in January, who was a cut above the rest, delivering a first Champion Chase success for Willie Mullins. There cannot be many more big jumps races that the master Irish trainer has not won.
“This guy deserved it,” Paul Townend, the winning jockey, said of his horse, who won at odds of 5-2. “He had won on very heavy ground in Ireland so that wasn’t going to worry us.”
With Nube Negra a late non-runner on that heavy ground, after watering in the morning and the unexpected downpour that followed, a field of seven lined up.
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It was small but strong, with the hot favourite and the eventual winner joined by two former champions – Put The Kettle On and Politologue – as well as Chacun Pour Soi, last year’s beaten favourite, and Envoi Allen, once considered the next big thing in National Hunt racing and fresh from a wind operation.
Chacun Pour Soi and Envoi Allen made the early running, soon joined by Put The Kettle On, but all eyes were on Shiskin and the signs were not good. The eight-year-old, who won the Arkle Chase here last year and the Supreme Novices’ Hurdle in 2020, was never travelling comfortably. After a couple of awkward jumps, De Boinville decided it was not his mount’s day and they pulled up.
Chacun Pour Soi was soon out of the running too, unseating Patrick Mullins five out, and his stablemate capitalised, easing clear of his remaining rivals and extending his advantage up the famous hill to win by eight-and-a-half lengths.
Energumene — owned by Tony Bloom, the Brighton & Hove Albion chairman — was followed home by Funambule Sivola, a 40-1 shot, as more established rivals emptied their tanks trying to keep up with the eight-year-old.
“I absolutely did believe [he could win],” Bloom said. “The rain really helped us. We were praying for rain and we’re delighted to be wet. It’s brilliant. Obviously when Shishkin pulled up that made it a lot easier for us, but full credit to Energumene, he’s a brilliant horse.”
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For Shishkin there will surely be better days ahead. “It’s just [heavy] ground, isn’t it?” Henderson said. “He couldn’t get out of the ground going to the first fence. Nico was dead right, there was no point in subjecting him to any more of that. He appears to be perfectly OK.”
He has still never been beaten under rules when finishing the race — this was Shishkin’s second career defeat, having fallen early on in a low-grade hurdle contest at Newbury in late 2019 — and he remains one of the leading stars in the two-mile chasing division.
Henderson knows all about those, having trained Sprinter Sacre and Altior — the best horses in this division in the past decade — and the 71-year-old will already be looking forward to gaining revenge next year.
