Douvan, Un de Sceaux, Faugheen and Annie Power. At the 2015 Cheltenham Festival it seemed so simple.
The Willie Mullins/Ruby Walsh opening day four-timer paid 14/1. Punters lined up to take it and on a glorious spring afternoon at Prestbury Park, they delivered like clockwork.
Then - in one of the most dramatic moments in recent Cheltenham history - came the final flight of the David Nicholson Mares' Hurdle. Timeform tell the story.
Extract from Annie Power essay in the 2014-15 Chasers & Hurdlers
The sight of Ruby Walsh standing up in his irons in triumph after passing the post on a Willie Mullins-trained winner became a familiar one on the Tuesday of the Cheltenham Festival.
The Mullins stable had four hot favourites on the opening day and, after the victories of Douvan in the Supreme Novices' at 2/1, Un de Sceaux in the Arkle at 6/4-on and Faugheen in the Champion Hurdle at 5/4-on, the four-timer looked all set to be completed when Annie Power, sent off the shortest of the lot at 2/1-on, held a commanding lead coming to the last in the David Nicholson Mares Hurdle.
But instead of celebrating another win, Walsh was picking himself up off the floor afterwards following a dramatic fall from which both horse and rider, fortunately, emerged unscathed.
Full of running, Anne Power took off a stride too soon, clipped the top of the hurdle and sprawled to the ground as she tried in vain to keep her feet. Walsh was unable to offer an explanation for her lapse, though he didn't believe, as some suggested, that Annie Power had misjudged her take-off because of the shadow cast by the hurdle in front of the flight.
However, she wasn’t the only faller at the last, either, as L'Unique came down independently when held in sixth.
It has been rare for the result of races at the Cheltenham Festival to be significantly affected by mishaps at the final obstacle but, oddly, Willie Mullins had experienced similar reversals of fortune there twice before.
In the 2002 Supreme Novices, Adamant Approach looked all over the winner when quickening readily under Ruby Walsh to take a narrow lead at the last only to fall, presenting the raca to Like-A-Butterfly. Eleven years later, Boston Bob (ridden by Paul Townend) was around a length up and had all his rivals in trouble when departing at the final fence in the RSA Chase won by future Gold Cup winner Lord Windermere.
Another race at the latest Festival to feature a dramatic turn of events in the closing stages was the Cross Country Chase. Taking the second last, a "stuffed hurdle', the French-trained favourite Toutancarmont was disputing the lead when jumping badly to his left into another of the more fancied runners Quantitativecasing who was going well on his inner, carrying out that rival on landing as the pair of them careered through the running rail and into Racing Post photographer Patrick McCann, who sustained a broken leg.
Overall, though, the latest Festival largely escaped headline-making serious incidents, although the amateur Mr Tom Weston sustained two puncture lungs after a fall from Benbane Head in the Fulke Walwyn Kim Muir and two horsaes were killed at the meeting, Theatre Queen and Rolling Star.
Despite Annie Power's fall, Willie Mullins did at least have the consolation of completing his four-timer when stable-companion Glens Melody, who had been left in the lead, held on to win by a head.
While the favourite's mishap therefore made no difference to her stable's total on the day, it had huge implications for the betting industry as a whole, in addition to spoiling many individuals' accumulators, Coral described the day as their worst ever at the Festival as Walsh's three winners had all been well backed, but things would have been worse still if all four of the Mullins favourites –‘the four horses of the apocalypse' as bookmakers dubbed them - had won to complete a 14/1 accumulator.
Estimates of how much Annie Power's fall had saved the industry varied considerably, though it's safe to say it ran into tens of millions of pounds, with Ladbrokes claiming 'It would have been worse than Dettori Day in 1996 (Frankie Dettori's Magnificent Seven' at Ascot] if Annie Power hadn't come unstuck."
Annie Power's fall also denied a Grade 1 treble on the day for her owner Rich and Susannah Ricci, earlier successful with Douvan and Faugheen. The Riccis had a third Cheltenham winner when Vautour trotted up in the Golden Miller, but Rich Ricci said on the last day of the meeting that the best moment of the week for him had been seeing Annie Power get to her feet after her fall.
