Ireland’s racing fans have taken the hot favourite for Cheltenham festival’s ultimate prize to their heart
The Irish wrote an anthem for Cottage Rake, the first horse from Ireland to win the Cheltenham Gold Cup three times, while the second, Arkle, transcended the sport to become an Irish cultural icon. And when Best Mate, trained in Wantage by the endearingly odd couple of Henrietta Knight and Terry Biddlecombe, completed his Gold Cup hat-trick nearly 40 years later, he too broke out of the back pages and into the mainstream of sporting celebrity.
Twenty-one years on from the tearful scenes that accompanied Best Mate’s third Gold Cup, however, it feels as though there is rather less of a fanfare, in Britain at least, for Galopin Des Champs, who will attempt to become only the fifth horse ever to win three Gold Cups at Cheltenham on Friday afternoon. Perhaps it is a sign of British insularity, or even a smidge of pique after a decade when Irish jumpers have carried all before them at Cheltenham. The increasingly fractured media landscape, with a dwindling number of events that can unite an audience in a shared experience, is probably a factor too.
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