Cheltenham Festival 2016: Warrior Balthazar King on his knees again but still returns on a high

A fall in the Grand National 11 months ago left him with broken ribs and a punctured lung before attendant pneumonia almost killed him

Balthazar King and Richard Johnson slither on falling at the bank obstacle in the Cross-Country Chase at Cheltenham (PA)

The house was still in a state of agitation as the runners entered the parade ring for the Glenfarclas Country Chase here. The kind of commotion produced by Sprinter Sacre’s epic triumph in the Queen Mother Champion Chase is unique to this arena, one of the great ones coming home, if not quite the peerless champion of three years ago, good enough to slap down all pretenders.

The owners of Balthazar King were hoping for just a little of that action, a sprinkling of Sprinter’s stardust, perhaps, a place, maybe, to celebrate the return to Cheltenham they thought might never be his. A fall in the Grand National 11 months ago left Balthazar with broken ribs and a punctured lung. Of themselves the injuries were not life-threatening. It was attendant pneumonia that almost killed him.

The King has eight victories here, four of them over the cross-country circuit and two at the Festival in this very race. His return was, therefore, a celebration all its own. Owners Chris Butler and David Rees, Hampshire farming folk both, mingled with trainer Philip Hobbs and friends, radiating excitement in the celebratory, post-Sprinter air.

Jockey Richard Johnson wandered over for the standard exchanges that form such a part of the experience before assuming his mount and heading to the start. Johnson had been on board at Aintree 340 days previously. The fall is as big a part of the story as the triumph, a central feature of the landscape. This was a horse that broke his jaw on his debut around this circuit. His warrior spirit was never in question. His durability was.

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Would he come back in one piece in his first outing since or would it all be too much? The answer came at the sixth, his leading leg clipping the top of the bank, sending Johnson unceremoniously into the hedge on the far side of the circuit. There is no cheering over there, only the thunder of hooves and the silence of failure and disappointment. All that hope and yearning gone in a fleeting moment. The owners did not even see it, unsighted as they were in the distant grandstand.

They were a concerned brood in the unsaddling enclosure until Johnson gave them a brief thumbs-up. Though they had seen Balthazar continue to run without his rider, that is no guarantee of health. It was a full 10 minutes before Balthazar was led into the enclosure by his smiling groom. Penny Lownds, the saint who had patiently nursed him to health, was among the first to greet him, a touching moment that signalled there would be another race on another day.

“He has come back safe. Disappointed that he has fallen. But I’m relieved he has come back safe and sound. That was always our first concern,” Butler said. “Looking at him now, you would not have believed it was possible when he came back from Liverpool.

“Heart was in the mouth a bit. We have had so many highs with him but you have to realise that there are also lows. We thought that was the end of him at the National. We didn’t think he would race again, so it’s amazing he’s back.”

Was there an omen in the victory of Sprinter Sacre, who was pulled up by Ruby Walsh on his return last year following his heart scare? “He’ll win here next year, you mean? That would be nice, wouldn’t it?” Butler said. “He hasn’t had a race for a year, really. We still don’t know whether he will complete a race, with his lungs, but he looked all right when he came back to the unsaddling enclosure.”

A damaged tendon to the leg of No More Heroes in the RSA Chase was the extent of the serious injuries on day two. Whether it was treatable had still to be determined, but still a better outcome than the fatality count of three on the opening afternoon.

There was better news, too, from the executive boxes, where no sightings of a phallus were reported on Ladies’ Day. That might have had something to do with the calibre of sportsman in attendance, international rugby players in the main, including Wales pair Jamie Roberts and Alex Cuthbert.

It did not start promisingly. Even before the gates opened one enterprising snapper had lined up his cargo, sundry females of the species sporting all manner of feathered confections on their heads and raised by crane on to heels the height of telegraph poles.

And then there were the boys. There cannot be a pair of tan brogues left for sale in the Cotswolds, all of them on the feet of young men clad in undersized jackets and trousers so tight they might double as compression suits. Every second male in Cheltenham, it appears, has a heavily groomed beard and a parting carved into his skull, effectively the foundation for a quiff on which you might land a small aircraft.

The challenge was to maintain the necessary decorum, avoiding the primal nosedive into caveman culture that claimed one footballer from Milton Keynes, photographed draining his bladder into a pint pot via his exposed pecker.

Samir Carruthers, who was fined two weeks’ wages and suspended for Saturday’s fixture against Brighton, said sorry. “I don’t want to be known as the idiot who urinated in a pint glass. I feel so embarrassed.”

Apology accepted.

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