Who can emulate these three heroes from Cheltenham's past?
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Ah, the Paddy Power Gold Cup - a special race and a great time of year, with that brilliant run of Saturday races taking us to Christmas (aka the day before the King George). There are 26 horses still entered as I type, so we can have every hope of another thriller at Cheltenham on Saturday.
As a kid in the 1980s, listening to Peter O'Sullevan talking about whether Half Free was about to make history, I thought this race must have been around forever. In reality, it had been going for a mere 25 years at that point, but it's much older now, as we all are, and has generated a great store of glorious memories.
Stage Star and Ga Law, the last two winners, may both have another go this weekend. Either one would be the first dual winner for over 20 years. It's hard to win any major handicap more than once, of course, because the handicapper pummels you for doing it the first time.
There have been just three multiple winners of this race in my lifetime. We've had more in the Gold Cup!
All three of them count as heroes of autumn, horses who make you feel glad to be alive as another jumps season kicks into gear. It'll take a good one to join their ranks.
Half Free
He was a Tardis horse, small on the outside but with a huge engine in there somewhere. "He was 10lb better at Cheltenham than anywhere else," Richard Linley told me. Together, they won the Mackeson (as the race is still known to many) in 1984 and 1985, Half Free becoming the first to win it in consecutive years.
It's impressive how much faith Linley had in the horse, sitting quietly on the run to two-out while Acarine was clear in 1984. Seconds later, they were upsides at the turn for home – bad news for everyone else, because Half Free was famously hard to beat up the final hill.
A year later, he had to work much harder to beat Newlife Connection by a head, giving that rival a stone and a half. It was good form; the runner-up won twice the following month and again on Scottish National day.
It might have been three in a row. Half Free came back as a ten-year-old in 1986, his cause not helped by a penalty for winning at Wincanton nine days earlier. It meant he had to give 5lb to the younger Very Promising and he came up short by two lengths, with Peter Scudamore aboard this time.
Scu had asked Linley for guidance about how to ride him. "Don't worry about it," he was told. "He'll run his own race. You'll think he's struggling, going away from the grandstand. And you'll get to the top of the hill and he'll come back on the bridle."
"One of the best I ever rode," is Scu's verdict on Half Free. They won a Cathcart at the festival, to the jockey's relief, as Fred Winter had just given him a bollocking for his ride on I Haventalight in a handicap chase.
"You think you're flat out all the way," Scu recalled, "and then he picks up from two out. It makes you look so good because it looks as if you've timed your run perfectly. But you haven't, you've been panicking all the way..."
Bradbury Star
A king of Cheltenham, where he won eight times. I'm not sure where that would rank him these days - is anyone keeping score? - but at the time, only Silver Fame (the Gold Cup winner of 1951) had won more races at the home of jump racing.
The final two victories of his career came in the Mackeson Gold Cups of 1993 and 1994. Like Half Free, there was a degree of comfort on the first occasion while things got a bit frantic the following year.
The run-in must, obviously, have been a struggle in 1994 because there were only inches in it at the line and Second Schedual was closing. But Bradbury Star looked so relaxed the whole time, his ears pricked even as Philip Hide asked for everything. He was at a place he knew well, attempting a job he knew how to do.
Bradbury Star gave the runner-up 13lb and beat him a head. Next time out, Second Schedual was a close third in the King George.
"He kept on surprising me," said Josh Gifford, trainer of Bradbury Star. "He just wanted to please and kept on trying harder."
Cyfor Malta
It's a good time to remember this lovely horse, who made it to the grand age of 31 and passed on just a fortnight ago. Injury affected his career but he showed top-class form when he won at Cheltenham in January 1999, beating Go Ballistic and See More Business, who were then first and second (but the other way round) in the Gold Cup.
Cyfor Malta had hacked up in the Topham the previous year at the tender age of five and the handicapper evidently didn't react strongly enough because his next run was in the Paddy Power - or the Murphy's Gold Cup, as it was then - and he won again.
The others couldn't go with him as he pulled clear from the top of the hill. Then came a mild scare on the run-in as Simply Dashing closed in. Was Cyfor Malta tiring or just idling? You be the judge.
It was four years before he had another go at the race, by then called the Thomas Pink Gold Cup. He was rising ten years old and allowed to start at 16-1 because the previous season had ended with four heavy defeats. The money was all for Martin Pipe's other runner, Chicuelo, but that one just wasn't up to the jumping test that Cheltenham posed and AP McCoy pulled him up.
Despite being older than most of his rivals and having top weight on his back, Cyfor Malta gradually worked his way into the lead at the home turn, soared over the last and won by seven lengths.
"His jumping was brilliant, it was almost as if he was on springs," Barry Geraghty said. "I knew he could jump, having seen him at Aintree, but to experience it first hand was another thing altogether. He had such wonderful scope for a jumper. I went down the inside and was always going to win, once I got after him."
Who Am I?
Today's clue:
"You'll know me better as a trainer, if you know me at all, but I loved my earlier days in the saddle. I rode a point-to-point winner in Gloucestershire and would sometimes take part in the military races at Sandown. I'd get excited about those for weeks beforehand. It was a tremendous thrill, falling off at the first. All my career, I relished low-profile successes. Once, when asked which races I most wanted to win, I gave two answers: the Gold Cup and the maiden at the Torrington Farmers' point-to-point."
It's the start of a new week in our 'Who Am I?' quiz, based around a different racing personality each week. We'll give you a new clue every day, with the answer revealed on Friday.
Think you know who it is? Email frontrunner@racingpost.com to say who. I'll give a mention to everyone who gets it right.
Congratulations to Howard Clayden, who was first to spot the voice of Tom Scudamore behind last week's description of a winning ride at the Cheltenham Festival.
Three things to look out for today
1. The Robert Walford yard, having been quiet through the summer, has had three winners from 11 runners since the start of October and is two from three in handicap hurdles over the past fortnight. So it's an interesting time for the five-year-old mare All Under Control to make her debut for Walford in a marathon handicap hurdle for novices (3.25) at Kempton. A lack of pace looked like the issue in her first two handicaps in the spring, both at 2m3f.
2. Having had 22 runs this year, Sisters In The Sky has done yeoman's work for the sport but it doesn't seem to have taken the edge off him. He won at Bath last month and then ran his best race for 20 months (judged by RPRs) when fourth there on Halloween, running on eyecatchingly after having to go wide around the pack. He meets a very different surface in a sprint handicap at Wolves (6.15) this evening but that shouldn't be a concern, as he scored over course and distance in March.
3. Those clever folk at the Horse Watchers have got hold of Cooperation and he carries their silks for the first time in a handicap at the end of Wolverhampton's card (8.15). He's been through a few different stables but it would be no surprise if Mick Appleby could revive the six-year-old, last seen in early September. His rating has declined 20lb in 14 months but there was some encouragement in his latest outing and he was second at this track from a 12lb higher mark last November. When he changed yards in the summer of 2022, he won his next two races.
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