Next in our series highlighting the achievements of Cheltenham greats, John Ingles focuses on Kauto Star.
Kauto Star will always be best remembered for his record five wins in the King George VI Chase but he equally deserves his place among the ‘Cheltenham Greats’. He competed at seven consecutive Festivals, making six of those appearances in the Gold Cup and winning it twice.
Eight horses have now won the Gold Cup more than once but Kauto Star has a unique place in the race’s history as being the only Gold Cup winner to win back his title after losing it. In terms of pure ability, too, Kauto Star has to go down as one of the great Gold Cup winners, his peak Timeform rating of 191 making him the best horse to win the race in our view in the sixty years or so since Arkle.
But Kauto Star’s Cheltenham story begins not in the Gold Cup but in the Queen Mother Champion Chase. His first appearance at the Festival came as a six-year-old in the 2006 renewal of that race which also happened to be the final start in the career of another Cheltenham Great, Moscow Flyer.
Kauto Star was sent off the 2/1 favourite, having won the Tingle Creek on his previous start on just his fourth run over fences (his novice season, when ante-post favourite for the Arkle, was curtailed by injury), but he got no further than the third at Cheltenham where he took a heavy fall. Moscow Flyer was hampered in the resulting melee and the race went to another Irish runner Newmill.
The following season revealed Kauto Star’s versatility over a range of distances. He won the Tingle Creek again but that was just two weeks after a resounding success on his first try over three miles in the Betfair Chase at Haydock which he took in breathtaking style.
When he then went on to win the King George VI Chase, it gave added significance to Kauto Star’s first Gold Cup bid as it put him in line to collect the Betfair Million bonus for completing the Betfair-King George-Gold Cup treble. Unbeaten in five starts that season before Cheltenham, Kauto Star was sent off the 5/4 favourite in a field of 18 for the Gold Cup, with the King George runner-up Exotic Dancer looking his main danger again at 9/2.
The combination of good ground and a steady pace meant that neither Kauto Star’s jumping – a concern for some after last-fence mistakes in his last couple of starts - nor his stamina were tested as much as they could have been.
Kauto Star did make a mistake at the last in the Gold Cup but not a serious one and he had the race won by then after jumping well otherwise. About a third of the field were still in contention turning for home due to the muddling pace but Kauto Star quickened decisively once into the straight after Ruby Walsh manoeuvred wide to get a clear run.
‘The only question was when to press the button’ said his jockey after Kauto Star’s victory by two and a half lengths from Exotic Dancer. But as Gold Cup performances go, it was by no means a vintage one. Kauto Star had put up better efforts earlier in the season when beating Exotic Dancer by a wider margin at Kempton and when winning the Old Roan Chase at Aintree under top weight by more than twenty lengths.
But apart from landing the Betfair Million, Kauto Star’s unbeaten campaign (he didn’t run after Cheltenham) brought him record seasonal earnings for a jumper in Britain and Ireland of more than £600,000. Completing the King George-Gold Cup double in the same season was also a rare achievement. No horse had done so between Arkle in the 1960s and Desert Orchid in 1989, and only Best Mate and Kicking King had managed it since Dessie.
Still only seven, Kauto Star, now rated 184+, was much the best chaser in training, though Paul Nicholls also had the hugely promising Denman, his next-door neighbour at Manor Farm, coming through the ranks and who completed an unbeaten novice season over fences in the Royal & SunAlliance Chase two days before the Gold Cup.
The stable-companions provided chasing’s biggest clash for years in the 2008 Gold Cup, one which really caught the public imagination and split opinions almost equally between the two camps. While Kauto Star won the Betfair and King George again on the way to Cheltenham, Denman’s wins included a stunning success under top weight in the Hennessy Gold Cup. On Gold Cup day, though, all the support was for Kauto Star, sent off at 10/11, while Denman drifted to 9/4.
But in a very different Gold Cup to the one Kauto Star had won the year before, Denman dealt a sound beating to his stablemate with a relentless display, jumping splendidly in front and making it a true test before coming home seven lengths clear.
Most interpreted Kauto Star’s defeat as being a result of having his stamina stretched, though the way he got the better of the stable’s third runner Neptune Collonges – a future Grand National winner – to regain second, with both of them gamely reducing Denman’s lead in the closing stages, suggested otherwise.
Kauto Star was under pressure some way out and it was more likely that he simply had an off-day, his less fluent jumping than usual backing up that theory. Despite the Gold Cup result, Kauto Star was rated 182+ in the Chasers & Hurdlers that season, ahead of Denman on 180p.
The stable-companions next met in the 2009 Gold Cup, though the rematch wasn’t as finely balanced as their first meeting. Kauto Star had much the smoother preparation, winning his third King George (though he’d unseated in the Betfair beforehand), whereas Denman had been beaten in his only start after missing much of the season recovering from an irregular heartbeat.
As a result, Kauto Star started 7/4 to be the first Gold Cup winner to regain his crown, while Denman drifted to 7/1 ahead of Neptune Collonges and Exotic Dancer.
Kauto Star’s second Gold Cup victory was the finest performance of his career to date and, in Timeform’s view, the best seen in a Gold Cup since the days of Arkle. He travelled supremely well, jumping much more assuredly than the year before, as Neptune Collonges set an even tempo.
After three out, Kauto Star eased into the lead, Denman briefly going with him but soon having no answer to Kauto Star’s turn of foot. Jumping the last two fences as well as he had the rest, Kauto Star was ridden out to win by 13 lengths from Denman with Exotic Dancer and Neptune Collonges completing the frame. Only Master Oats, a 15-length winner in 1995, had won the Gold Cup by a wider margin in the previous thirty years.
With the score between the two stable-companions in the Gold Cup now one apiece, the 2010 Gold Cup was widely billed as the decider between Kauto Star and Denman. The hype was ramped up by outstanding performances by both horses earlier in the season.
Denman won another Hennessy under top weight while Kauto Star won his third Betfair and equalled Desert Orchid’s total of four wins in the King George, winning the latter officially by ‘a distance’ – as only Arkle had done previously - but his margin calculated by Timeform to be an astonishing 36 lengths.
For the fourth year running, therefore, Kauto Star was sent off favourite for the Gold Cup and shorter than ever at 8/11, with Denman at 4/1. 7/1 third favourite Imperial Commander was given much less attention in the build-up, having been beaten three times already by Kauto Star, but two of those defeats had been in the King George and he had a much better record at Cheltenham.
Even before Kauto Star took a nasty-looking fall four out, it was apparent that the race wasn’t going to pan out as expected. Kauto Star had already survived a bad blunder earlier in the race and was never in a good rhythm after that, Walsh being hard at work in a close fifth when Kauto Star fell. Denman, in contrast, jumped that fence really well after going with more zest throughout but was left behind on the run-in as Imperial Commander drew seven lengths clear.
Kauto Star’s King George rout earned him a rating that season of 191 when he was also named Timeform’s Horse of the Year for the third time.
But by the time he contested his fifth Gold Cup, as an eleven-year-old in 2011, Kauto Star had something to prove. Bidding to win a record fifth King George, he could finish only third behind a rival five years his junior, Long Run.
Consequently, Kauto Star started only third in the betting at Cheltenham on 5/1 behind Long Run (7/2 and Imperial Commander (4/1). Although beaten, Kauto Star played a full part in an epic edition of the Gold Cup which proved much more of a head-to-head with Denman than either of the two previous renewals had been.
In the end, Long Run proved too good for both of them, but all three horses contributed to an unforgettable race, the trio jumping the second last together before Long Run asserted to win by seven lengths and four from Denman and Kauto Star.
There had been calls by some for Kauto Star to be retired after his King George defeat and they were repeated after he was pulled up at Punchestown on his next start after Cheltenham, but the Gold Cup showed that he was still a top-class chaser and the decision to keep him in training for one more season proved fully vindicated.
Beating Long Run comprehensively to win his fourth Betfair Chase was a clear sign that Kauto Star wasn’t ready to be pensioned off just yet, something he underlined when beating the same rival to make history as the first five-timer winner of the King George.
But there was no fairytale ending to Kauto Star’s career in his sixth Gold Cup appearance in the build-up to which he had fallen heavily when schooling. With Denman now retired, the 2012 Gold Cup was promoted as ‘the decider’ between Long Run (7/4) and Kauto Star (3/1) but neither gave their running, Long Run finishing a below-form third to Synchronised while Kauto Star didn’t even make it to halfway.
Walsh pulled him up approaching the tenth fence which drew spontaneous applause from the crowd similar to the reaction when Istabraq was pulled up in the early stages of the Champion Hurdle ten years earlier.
That proved to be Kauto Star’s final race of a career that brought him 19 wins over fences, 16 of them Grade 1 contests, along with four wins over hurdles in France early in his career, while his prize money totalled more than £2.3m.
In his final campaign, with a rating of 179, he was the best staying chaser in training as he had been in each of the four seasons before Long Run temporarily deprived him of that title.
In the last of Kauto Star’s eight essays in Chasers & Hurdlers, his final season was described as ‘a fitting end to the career of a horse who has done more than any of his generation to promote steeplechasing to the wider public beyond the sport’s diehards.’
