Edwardstone leads the way for jumping's senior citizens

By John Ingles

Horse Racing

Sun January 18, 2026 · 3h ago

The first two Saturdays of the New Year showed there’s plenty of truth in the saying that ‘there’s many a good tune played on an old fiddle’.

At Sandown, we had the final of the popular Veterans’ Handicap Chase series which went to Nocte Volatus, an eleven-year-old who had begun his career at the age of four, was in his seventh season of racing for Tom Lacey, and yet defied a career-high mark in beating the former Coral Gold Cup winner Le Milos.

A week later it was the turn of twelve-year-old Edwardstone to take centre stage in the Silviniaco Conti Chase at Kempton. While Edwardstone was receiving weight from his three rivals and the race was overshadowed by the injury to Kalif du Berlais, Alan King’s veteran nonetheless put up another smart performance to record his eleventh career success after several similar efforts in defeat since his previous win in the Game Spirit Chase nearly two years earlier.

A top-class two-miler in his prime, Edwardstone is another who has been a fine servant to his connections since the age of four, counting the Arkle (which he won as the senior runner at the age of eight) and Tingle Creek among his wins.

Edwardstone’s Grade 2 win is seen in a better light when you consider that he is just the third chaser in Britain this season to win a race aged twelve or older. The only others gained their wins in ordinary early-season handicaps. Another twelve-year-old, Cracking Destiny, gained his ninth career win when successful for Ewan Whillans at Hexham in June, while the only teenager to be successful over fences in Britain so far this season is Di Grissell’s thirteen-year-old Ballintara who got the better of the year-younger Unblinking to win at Fontwell in May.

Edwardstone wins the Coral Silviniaco Conti Chase

Another thirteen-year-old was successful in Ireland when Vital Island gained his third cross-country win at the Punchestown Festival two days after finishing fourth in the La Touche Cup which he had won two years earlier. Vital Island is the same age as another Irish cross-country specialist Roi Mage, profiled in this column recently, who earned more than €36,000 when winning the Grand Cross at Craon in France last September for the second year running.

Edwardstone is the same age as some other chasers of note to have performed well in graded company earlier this season before they turned twelve. Fellow Ryanair Chase entry, and former winner of that race, Envoi Allen showed that he remains a high-class chaser when winning his third Champion Chase at Down Royal. A third Betfair Chase eluded Royale Pagaille, but he showed a similar level of form to finish second at Haydock in November. Another twelve-year-old with Festival entries is former dual Champion Chase winner Energumene who finished third when bidding to win the Hilly Way Chase at Cork for a fourth time.

Envoi Allen and jockey Darragh O'Keeffe after winning the Ladbrokes Champion Chase

But it’s extremely rare for horses as old as Edwardstone to be successful in non-handicap Graded races. He was the first twelve-year-old to win a Grade 2 over fences in Britain since Menorah, who retired on the back of a fourth successive win under Richard Johnson for Philip Hobbs in the Oaksey Chase at Sandown nine years earlier.

Since then, another twelve-year-old, former Champion Hurdle winner Faugheen, had gone one better in Ireland by winning a Grade 1, proving a real one-off as he was a novice over fences despite his advanced age, winning the Flogas Novice Chase at the 2020 Dublin Racing Festival from stablemate Easy Game who was half his age. In his only subsequent start, Faugheen finished a close third when sent off favourite for the Golden Miller Novices’ Chase at Cheltenham.

Alan King had a treble at Kempton last weekend, though not surprisingly picked out Edwardstone’s victory as ‘special’, adding ‘his enthusiasm is as good as it’s ever been, and we’ve always taken the view that if he doesn’t want to do it we’ll stop. But he’s loving the job at the moment.’

‘Why can’t we let these old horses go on and enjoy themselves?’ King asked. ‘I’m old enough to remember Sonny Somers, trained by Fred Winter, who won as an eighteen-year-old, and Mac Vidi was third in a Gold Cup at fifteen.’ Mention of those old-timers does give a different perspective to the term ‘veteran’ when chasers as young as ten are eligible for the qualifiers in that current series. Mac Vidi and Sonny Somers were contemporaries and achieved the feats which King highlighted in the same season, 1979/80, when both were recognised with essays in that year’s Timeform Chasers & Hurdlers annual.

Even if he hadn’t run in the Gold Cup, Mac Vidi would still have been credited with an extraordinary season for a chaser well into his teens. He wasn’t wrapped in cotton wool in his old age, either, as he had a dozen races that season and won seven of them, six in a row as the handicapper tried in vain to keep up with him! He might have started off in modest company, but he ended up winning at the bigger tracks with two wins apiece at Kempton and Ascot.

Despite his improvement, Mac Vidi was still a 66/1-shot for the Gold Cup only to defy expectations again. Going to two out he was only a couple of lengths behind the leader but tired up the hill to finish third past the post of the six who completed behind Tied Cottage and Master Smudge, beaten a total of thirteen lengths.

However, Mac Vidi was later promoted to second after Tied Cottage was disqualified when testing positive for a prohibited substance believed to have come from contaminated feed. Tied Cottage, incidentally, was the second-oldest horse at the age of twelve in a far from vintage Gold Cup field.

Timeform had their own theory about Mac Vidi’s rejuvenation: ‘Perhaps in this great enthusiasm, his zest for jumping and his heart for a fight, lies the clue to discovering a reason why he blossomed in the extraordinary way he did. He may well be what he is largely as a result of the individual and unconventional care given him in his last few years by his owner-breeder-trainer [Pam Neal], who has a guest house to run in addition to looking after her very useful old chaser. Mac Vidi is turned out in a field on Dartmoor for a large part of the day, by all accounts, and has probably thrived more on that than he would have done if he’d been left as one of the string of either of his former trainers.’

Mac Vidi ran for another couple of seasons, having his final race in November 1982 just before turning seventeen. Even older, though, was Sonny Somers who, as King said, was eighteen when winning a couple of handicap chases at Southwell and Lingfield and was ‘afforded the sort of reception usually reserved for a Grand National winner or a big-race winner at the Cheltenham Festival.’ In all, Sonny Somers won 25 of his 109 races and in his later years served as a ‘schoolmaster’ for the Winter stable’s less experienced jockeys. In his two wins in 1980 he was partnered by conditional rider Ben de Haan, later to win the Grand National on Corbiere.

Galopin Des Champs and Paul Townend strike gold at Punchestown

The topic of age may well be raised in the build-up to this year’s Cheltenham Gold Cup. After all, the current favourite is the 2023 and 2024 winner Galopin des Champs who is bidding to win back his crown at the age of ten. As we’ve seen, in the wider scheme of things that’s not a particularly advanced age for a chaser. But if he’s successful again, it would make Galopin des Champs the oldest Gold Cup winner this century.

Gold Cup winners are getting younger, and the notion of a ten-year-old being ‘past it’ wouldn’t have held in the twentieth century. The average age of the Gold Cup winner from 2000 onwards is 7.8. On the other hand, the average age of winners in the last three decades of the last century was 8.4 during which time the ten-year-olds The Dikler, Silver Buck, Charter Party, Desert Orchid, Cool Ground and Cool Dawn were all successful.

Between the Second World War and 1969, there were several still older Gold Cup winners, with four aged eleven and two aged twelve. They included Cottage Rake (eleven when he completed his hat-trick of wins) and Mandarin who were classed as ‘superior’ winners in John Randall and Tony Morris’s classification of Gold Cup winners in A Century of Champions, with Prince Regent ranked higher still as a ‘great’.

There may be some truth in the view, therefore, that ‘they don’t make ‘em like they used to.’ While there have also been younger Gold Cup winners in the past too, there are a greater proportion of French-bred jumpers around now who tend to come to hand earlier than the traditional ‘National Hunt’ type. Galopin des Champs won his first Gold Cup at seven, as did fellow French-breds Kauto Star and Al Boum Photo, while Long Run was younger still at six. Of course, Kauto Star aged supremely well too, winning the last of his five King Georges just short of his twelfth birthday and starting just 3/1 to win another Gold Cup later that season.

While the presence of a ‘veteran’ in the finish to a big race often raises a red flag as far the strength of the form is concerned, as Edwardstone’s recent victory might have done, that is surely outweighed by the popularity of such horses and what they bring to the sport. As Timeform’s report on Menorah’s final win at Sandown said, ‘it would take a misanthrope of the tallest order not to be warmed by the winner's performance.’

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