The Ditcheat Horses
Words and pictures by Sara Waterson
There is something magical about watching any racing yard go about its early-season business on a sunny morning, but to be let loose in the Champion National Hunt yard, filled with happy eager horses and smiling healthy young people fired up with enthusiasm for the season ahead, is very heaven.
Second lot was coming as I arrived, and I spotted the great 12-time Group 1 winner Kauto Star immediately, peeling off to the Number 1 box on his right. He spotted me too: this horse loves the camera and planted himself while he waited for me to come over to pay him his dues! I had to wait until the rest had filed through, as his rider Donna coaxed him forward, but then spent an inordinate time hanging around his box, like any rock star groupie round the Stage Door, while he condescended to be stroked, admired and photographed. He’s quite a charmer. It was something special to hear him having a roll in his shavings – accompanied by a tremendous long rumbling roar like an underground train passing beneath the pavement! I expressed some envy of Donna Blake who rides him each morning: “He’s not always easy” she replied, “He’s very, very sharp – as all good horses are, but he more than most. You have to have your wits about you every minute.”
The great horse, dual Gold Cup winner, three times King George Chase winner, and now three times Betfair Chase winner following his narrow victory on Saturday, is now 9 and will accordingly have only two more races this season, in an attempt to break the KG record with a fourth win, and to equal Best Mate’s and Arkle’s three wins in the Gold Cup. My money will be on him to do it, and my heart with him.
The corner of the yard over which he presides has jokingly been dubbed “Millionaires’ Row”, more to reflect the horses’ winnings than to describe their owners’ bank balances (though that probably also applies)! Next door in Box 2 is Denman, also a Gold Cup winner (beating a slightly off-colour Kauto Star in 2008) and beyond him are Master Minded, dual Champion Chase winner at Cheltenham (over 2 miles) and winner of several other G1s in Box 3, and in Box 4, Big Buck's who will be going for a repeat win of the World Hurdle in March over 3 miles.
Denman, a year younger, will once more renew rivalry with his stablemate, each having beaten the other in successive Gold Cups when his rival was below par following mysterious ailments which while hard to pin-point affected their seasons. In Denman’s year 2008 Kauto had some strange muscle problem; in 2009 Denman developed a fibrillation of the heart following his Gold Cup win and was a fairly sick horse even following his treatment, never quite recovering his form last season but nevertheless finishing a hugely brave 2nd to Kauto in the big race in March. All of racing hopes they will both be on song this year: with the laurels standing at one all it would be some showdown!
Meanwhile, as the debate will continue to rage over which is innately superior, Denman will head (with two stablemates) to Newbury next Saturday to attempt a second win in the Hennessy Cognac Gold Cup, the most prestigious stayers’ handicap in the calendar. It’s a race he won as only a 6yr old under top weight in 2008, barely glimpsing another horse from pillar to post. All racing fans will pray he is back to his best for the occasion.
He’s a totally different character to Kauto, far more reserved and not such a lover of people. I remarked he looked quite fed up while the others were out and Donna, who also rides him daily, said “Oh he was probably sulking – I usually ride him before Big Buck’s. If he were a bloke, he’d be the grumpy old man at the back of the pub!” – and she warned me not to turn my back on him as he’s been known to bite, or even to push people over the step outside his box. But she also commented on his well-being: “He’s a very different horse this year. Last year he was really down – now he’s very well, and ready to go on again.” He certainly looks his old magnificent self.
The big stars are backed up by a goodly number of multiple winners, several at top level, any of which might be the stable star in any other yard! And in this yard, you always know that any of the youngsters – spotted by the yard's scouts mainly in France and Ireland – might well turn out to be a future superstar. Unlike some trainers who excel with the distaff side, Paul has very few fillies or mares, preferring to specialise in the kind of big rangy geldings which excel over big fences and can carry big weights, as all good horses must. It’s usually been easy to spot a ‘Nicholls horse’ in the Parade Ring, even before they adopted the smart bright red livery of yard sponsors, Connaught.
This yard harbours most of the stars of the jumping game, and although Paul has had a slower start to the season than usual, with a few runners lacking race sharpness first time out, he made it clear he was bringing the horses on more conservatively this year so as not to risk them ‘going over’ before the valuable championship races in the spring.
The stats speak for themselves: Paul Nicholls last year passed the landmark total of 50 Grade 1 winners over jumps, a tremendous achievement in only 17 years with a licence. Twelve of those were last season, and included three of the four ‘crown jewels’ of Cheltenham – only the Champion Hurdle eluding the yard by the shortest of margins. With over £4,000,000 in winnings just last season, and an enviable 25% strike of winners to runners in the UK (and an extraordinary 44% in his raids to Ireland) it’s going to be hard to surpass that seasonal record, but only a fool would bet against it.
