Writers from Timeform and Sporting Life discuss their Cheltenham favourites

Cheltenham Festival GOATs: Is Kauto Star the greatest Cheltenham horse of all time?

By David Ord

Horse Racing

Mon March 02, 2026 · 2h ago

In the run-up to Cheltenham, we've asked journalists from Timeform and Sporting Life to argue the case for the greatest Cheltenham horse of all time. The numbers make this an open-and-shut case – and we'll be talking about Arkle as the series concludes. But greatness, like beauty, is somewhat in the eye of the beholder. So which horses moved our writers most and why? Which performances from some of these Festival greats stand out? And how many of them can legitimately challenge Arkle in the GOAT conversation?

Why is Kauto Star the greatest Cheltenham horse of all time?

The only horse to regain the Cheltenham Gold Cup crown? The dazzling star in the last golden era of staying chasers? Not perfect, not infallible, but on his day, there wasn’t anything that could lay a glove on him.

Silky smooth traveller, slick jumper albeit with the ability to put your heart into your mouth with a late error or two. He was made for Paul Nicholls and Ruby Walsh, and they were made for him.

Kauto Star turned up at six successive Festivals, put bums on seats and did the marketing for us along with a helping hand from a neighbour or two. Brilliant, versatile and the best I saw. What's not to like?

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He failed to finish three times at the Festival, though, hardly screams G.O.A.T does it?

Oh sorry, I didn’t realise the criteria was the soundest jumper at Cheltenham? Let me find a handicap chaser or two that made it round safely five or six times without troubling the judge.

Come on. He fell in the Arkle on his first visit there and in the 2010 Gold Cup at a time when he was trying to hang on in a contest that was already slipping away from him. And the third occasion was his final start in the 2012 Gold Cup at the age of 12. Pulled-up early when Walsh knew the game was up.

So I’ll leave you with your glass half-empty approach, mine is half-full. We’re not dealing with a perfect racehorse here – but one who was unbeatable on the good days. And there were loads of those.

Okay he’s a modern great, granted, but imagine a soft ground Cheltenham Gold Cup with a few brutes in there, was he versatile enough to win one of those?

He’d have led them over the last and from there I don’t know but on good to soft ground those tractors wouldn’t have been able to see which way the Ferrari went.

But I do feel you’re being harsh on a horse like this, seemingly accusing him of being one-dimensional. How many Gold Cup winners would have been capable of winning a Champion Chase at the same time? He would.

He also won two Betfair Chases on Haydock soft ground and two Champion Chases at Down Royal on Irish soft. He might have floated like a butterfly, but he could still deliver a sting in the slop if and when required. And it's not like he didn't turn up at Cheltenham whatever the conditions threw at him.

Even though he won two Gold Cups, he had a touch of Desert Orchid about him didn’t he? Best a Kempton?

That would a very fair point other than Dessie also won four Betfair Chases going left-handed didn’t he at Haydock?

Yes, Kauto's best ever performance came in the King George, hitting a Timeform rating of 188+ when coming home a distance clear of Madison Du Berlais and co in 2009, but he also reached 181 when winning a second Gold Cup in the March of that year.

And that my friend was one of the very best performances in the race’s history, the best in the Gold Cup since Arkle, and cemented his place among the Cheltenham greats.

No it didn’t. It catapulted him to the top of the GOAT list as I never saw Arkle despite the grey beard and droopy eyes suggesting I was middle-aged when he was reigning supreme in the mid-1960s.

Kauto Star's unforgettable win in the 2009 Cheltenham Gold Cup

OK, you’ve made a good case. Now tell us your favourite Kauto Star moment.

That 2009 Gold Cup. It was spellbinding. The whole era was magical, the rivalry with Denman, Imperial Commander and the emerging force of Long Run. And this was Kauto's finest hour.

The previous year the remorseless, relentless Denman galloped him into the ground. The purple scarves were waving in the air as the principals returned to the winners’ enclosure. But 12 months on, there was never a single moment when Kauto Star wasn't in complete control of the race.

Ruby Walsh was motionless on the inside aboard the winner, exactly where he wanted to be every step of the way. Four out he jumped alongside the leader Neptune Collonges and was past him a fence later.

Sam Thomas tried to get Denman to eyeball the new leader on the turn for home but this time it was Kauto Star who kicked – five lengths clear two out – eight by the last – and the race was over.

The celebrations in the stand were wild, the reception as he returned to the winners’ enclosure never to be forgotten.

"That was poetry in motion all the way round,” Channel 4 commentator Simon Holt said seconds after he passed the post.

I’ve never seen a staying chaser who’d have got near him that day. The best winner of the Cheltenham Gold Cup I’ve ever seen, the best National Hunt horse I’ve ever seen.

Kauto Star – the GOAT.

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