Racing: Best Mate takes flight into Gold Cup history

Earthly opponents are running out for Best Mate, the glorious winner of a second consecutive Cheltenham Gold Cup here yesterday, and the challenge now is to chase the ghosts.

The eight-year-old's 10-length destruction of a quality field made him the first horse since L'Escargot in 1971 to retain steeplechasing's Blue Riband. It made, for once, legitimate the use of the A-word. For if Best Mate can return to the foot of Cleeve Hill in 12 months' time and complete a hat-trick he would emulate the horse that is the benchmark for the sport of National Hunt racing, a horse called Arkle. There is no higher station.

Such was the irresistible impression he created under Jim Culloty yesterday that even Best Mate's routinely reticent trainer, Henrietta Knight, began to make extravagant predictions. "Of course he could get injured," she said, "but, if he gets there next year in the condition he was this year, then nothing will stop him. He's such an athlete with a wonderful, effortless action. He's one in several million, the horse of a lifetime."

The Cheltenham Gold Cup had been flagged as a straight fight between Best Mate and the fresh champion of all Ireland, Beef Or Salmon. That theme died at the third fence, where Beef Or Salmon collapsed so dramatically he put his own mortality in peril. The young horse survived, however, and may be part of the sub-plot for next spring. For now, though, he is just another chaser. The horse is Best Mate.

The Irish chestnut also lost the battle for physical supremacy yesterday. He was not the most attractive creature in the parade ring, the owner of a particularly wispy tail. You could find more hair in the plughole. Best Mate was much the more attractive, his head bent and taught like a chess-piece knight. He nodded vigorously as he circled. Yes, I am the man, he seemed to be conveying.

In the early exchanges, the 13-8 favourite was positioned on the inside as Modulor, the no-hoper, led. Behrajan and an old champion in See More Business also contributed to a ferocious initial pace. "They went really fast, two-mile pace early on and I was thinking it was going to be a real test of stamina," Culloty reported. "I was trying to get him switched off and settled."

Modulor quickly dropped away as the good horses began to assert. But even most of the good horses were being ridden along. Elbows were jagging, shoulders heaving all around, but Best Mate was in a little pocket of tranquillity. Culloty was motionless. "I was the only person struggling to settle," the jockey said. "Everybody else was flat out. He was always travelling well and I had no problems at all, but I thought to myself at the last ditch, 'Jesus, how much more do I have left in the tank?'" He could not have got another drop in.

Just before the turn, the favourite swept past his stablemate, Chives, and, as he turned the corner, left the pursuing Valley Henry behind. There was a roaring appreciation from the stands, but then anxious silence as Best Mate negotiated the last two fences. Such was the cacophony on the run-in that Culloty, unaware Beef Or Salmon had fallen, feared a challenger was arriving. He assuaged himself by checking in the shadows thrown on the Gloucestershire turf. He was alone.

Truckers Tavern and Harbour Pilot, who passed the exhausted horses that had dared to mix it with Best Mate, picked up the scraps.

As he returned to another appreciative blast in the winners' enclosure, Culloty aimed three slow punches into the chill Cotswolds air. He was as measured in celebration as he had been in competition. "Everything went to plan and he put up an unbelievable performance," Culloty said. "It rode a far better race today than last year and I think this was a better performance. I had to put the gun to his head a lot sooner."

Knight says she will be out of this level of racing in five years' time, largely because of the associated pressure. She had even stopped going to the shops in the run-up to the Festival to avoid inquiries about Best Mate's health. "I was under a lot of pressure and I very nearly cracked before today," she said. Gold Cup morning was almost unbearable. "I was really bad. It did get to me. I'm not sure I can do this for a third year."

Yet she must. History awaits and the programme for next season will be the same as those that have gone before. Best Mate will not be asked to spread his talent thinly across the calendar. "You won't see him again until next autumn, when we have a chance of going to Exeter or Huntingdon, then Kempton [for the King George], before coming back here," the trainer said. "I know it lacks variety and it's a bit unimaginative, but this [Cheltenham] is what we want for him every year.

"It almost frightens me that he finds it so easy because he might get a bit blasé one day. He's a trainer's joy, such an easy horse to train. He eats, he sleeps, he does his work." And he exhilarates.