Richard Johnson celebrates on Rooster Booster
Richard Johnson celebrates on Rooster Booster

Timeform: The Great Essays - ROOSTER BOOSTER


He was the last horse to complete the International - Champion Hurdle double. Read the story of Rooster Booster's 2002-03 campaign.

Continuous improvement reached its logical conclusion. That's not to say that Rooster Booster cannot improve any further - rash in the extreme given how he has progressed in the last four seasons - but there is not that much scope for further enhancement now he has won the Champion Hurdle by eleven lengths.

The horse who earned praise the previous season for his improvement in the face of honourable defeats facing stiffer and stiffer tasks as a handicapper, now did so for being the best two-mile hurdler around and well-nigh unbeatable.

The perpetual bridesmaid turned into a serial bigamist. Here are Rooster Booster's ratings in Chasers & Hurdlers: 94 after two bumper starts in 1998/9, 124 in 1999/00, 143 in 2000/1, 152 in 2001/2 and now 170 in 2002/3. The Champion Hurdle was his twenty-sixth start over hurdles.

This sort of steady build-up is not unprecedented – Flakey Dove’s 1994 Champion Hurdle triumph, for instance, came after twenty-eight previous hurdle starts – but is certainly unusual as a look at the last ten other Champion Hurdle winners indicates. Hors La Loi III won it after eighteen jumps outings, Istabraq after ten. Make A Stand eleven, Collier Bay nine, Alder brook two, Granville Again fifteen, Royal Gait three, Morley Street sixteen, Kribensis ten and Beech Road twenty-two.

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Flakey Dove was an eight-year-old when she won. At the age of nine or more, no Champion Hurdle inner has ever made the sort of progress that Rooster Booster did. Hatton's Grace is the closest example, winning the first of his three Champions as a nine-year-old in 1949, undoubtedly much improved after joining Vincent O'Brien the previous summer but having already finished fifth in that year's Champion.

Four other nine-year-olds have taken the race: Free Fare (1937) and Our Hope (1938), who had both already been runner-up: Solford (1940), who fell at the last when holding every chance twelve months earlier, and Royal Gait (1992), who had been a high-class performer on the Flat. The incredible Sea Pigeon was already a Champion Hurdle veteran when he won the race for the first time at the age of ten in 1980-after, incidentally, thirty-one jumps outings and plenty more on the Flat.

To mention Rooster Booster in the same breath as Sea Pigeon would have seemed like blasphemy at the end of the 2001/2 season. Rooster Booster won at the Cheltenham Festival during that campaign but did so in the County Handicap Hurdle. Masking the substantial improvement made up to that point, the County Hurdle was only his second victory and came on the back of sixteen consecutive defeats.

In his only race after the County, however, came a hint of what Rooster Booster might be capable of; In the Grade 1 two-and-a-half mile Aintree hurdle, his first venture into pattern events, he travelled as strongly as anything into the straight before finishing fourth.

Back over two miles or thereabouts in the latest season, Rooster Booster reappeared at the Festival in the Champion Hurdle after four consecutive victories. An £8,151 event at Kempton in October, rooster Booster’s first port of call, did not strictly speaking, see improved form, but he was pulling double all the way up the straight in winning by seven lengths from Mr Cool, a smart rival sent off at 6/4 on to beat him. Concentrating on the form rather than the starting new manner of his Kempton victory, the bookmakers quotedRrooster Booster at 25/1 for the Champion.

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A comprehensive reappraisal took place when he won his next outing in not dissimilar style, despite stepping back into handicap company and carrying top weight (off a BHB mark of 155) in the normally fiercely competitive Rehabilitation of Racehorses Hurdle at the Cheltenham Open meeting.

The presence of the Supreme Novices third and fourth, In Contrast and Eternal Spring, gave the race a considerable lustre beforehand, as did that of the previous season's Grade 1 winning juvenile Quazar, classy chasers Latalomne and Dark 'n Sharp, and an easy last-time-out winner trained by Martin Pipe in Dream With Me, who was made favourite.

Rooster Booster drifted from 11/2 to 7/1 in on-course betting but he trotted up; always travelling and jumping well, he went on after the second last and ran right away from his rivals - a race description that was going to be equally applicable later on.

The final margin of victory over Quazar (who received 18 lb) was nine lengths, Rooster Booster recording a performance so outstanding that the way we read the form-book-it would have won him the previous season's Champion.

Rooster Booster was now available at no bigger than 10/1 for the 2003 Champion, joint favourite in places, and his next appearance came back at Cheltenham in a more conventional trial of his championship credentials, the Victor Chandler Bula Hurdle in December.

With the previous season's Champion Hurdle first, second, fourth and fifth all in opposition it promised to be a good test. Rooster Booster was made the 11/8 favourite with doubts of one sort or another hanging over the aforementioned Hors La Loi, Marble Arch, Geos and Landing Light when compared to the conspicuously in-form Rooster Booster.

The cramped odds seemed fully justified, as Rooster Booster won, but he did not actually enhance his Champion Hurdle case, though his Champion odds were cut, of course, to 4/1 as the bookmakers gave nothing away.

At the second last, it seemed that Rooster Booster might be about to win by as much as he had done four weeks earlier, but he did not assent superiority this time, passing the post two and a half lengths ahead of Landing Light and Geos. With Landing Light conceding 4 lb, a strict interpretation of the race did not even make Rooster Booster the best horse in the race.

Disappointment in performance was not at all widely expressed, however, but was after his next start when he scraped home by just half a length from the unheralded novice Self Defense in the Agfa Hurdle at Sandown at the start of February.

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Once again, there was everything to admire in Rooster Booster's performance up to the second last but after that he seemed to idle markedly in the heavy ground. Some thought he was not fully tuned up for this final start before the Champion, but trainer Philip Hobbs later speculated that perhaps it was just an "off day".

For the following month's Smurfit Champion Hurdle, Rooster Booster had an ‘on day’, the style of his victory so exalted that it again had his trainer and others groping in the dark for explanations.

One week earlier, in fact, Hobbs had stated that If the ground is on the fast side, I could see [stable-mate] In Contrast finishing in front of Rooster Booster. Watering and late rainfall made the ground good, Rooster Booster's handicap victory over the course in November was still the best form of the season and he ended up the 9/2 second favourite.

Favourite, at 5/2, was a contrasting sort in novice hurdler Rhinestone Cowboy, the unlucky 2002 Champion Bumper runner-up who was fresh from four facile victories over hurdles.

Also from Jonjo O'Neill's yard was 5/1 third favourite lntersky falcon who had won four in a row, including the Fighting fifth at Newcastle and Christmas Hurdle at Kemtppn.

Any late rain apparently boosted the chances of 2002 Supreme winner Like-A-Butterfly (13/2), whose latest start saw her get the better of a head-to-head with Limestone Lad in the AIG Europe Champion Hurdle at Leopardstown.

From the previous year's substandard running, only Hors La Loi (14/1), Marble Arch (25/1) and the blinkered Landing Light (14/1) did battle again, none of them having enhanced or even maintained their reputations in the meantime.

Haydock Trial winner Flame Creek (14/1) was the only other runner to start at odds shorter than 25/1 in a seventeen-strong field. Although none of them had put up a hurdling performance right from the top drawer, the field that lined up was fully representative and produced a seemingly highly competitive edition of the championship in which the first five in ante-post lists (Rhinestone Cowboy, Intersky Falcon, Rooster Booster. Like-A-Butterfly and Flame Creek) had had a total of seventeen races during the season and won them all.

None of the other fancied horses lived up to expectations as Rooster Booster gloriously exceeded those held for him. A one-sided contest it may have been, but there was drama with thoroughly unforeseen events at the beginning, before halfway and at the finish.

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First, after a widespread reluctance by the jockeys to obey the orders of the starter when the seventeen lined up, the defending champion Hors La Loi III refused to race, the fact that his jockey was the only one to escape a caution from the stewards afterwards being scant consolation.

Among those that did set off, the first surprise came from Rhinestone Cowboy. Tucked away on the inside, he was initially just ahead of Rooster Booster and then racing alongside him, but the two market leaders were soon travelling in starkly contrasting styles as shoddy jumping put the novice under pressure.

Rhinestone Cowboy was supposed to challenge late, and on the bridle, but the game was up for him an awful lot sooner than that.

It was a common story in the race. The field was hardly past halfway before the searching gallop set by Intersky Falcon had all of his opponents ridden along, all except one - Rooster Booster was pulling double, and still was when finally allowed to go on from the flagging Intersky Falcon turning into the home straight.

There were no conceivable dangers bar a fall. Copeland had already fallen when disputing second with him three out, after which 33/1-shot Westender and be sticking-to-their-guns stable-companions Intersky Falcon and Rhinestone Cowboy were the only others theoretically still in touch, but Rooster Booster was four lengths clear by the last and continued his surge to score by a massive margin.

The official eleven lengths has been exceeded only twice in Champion Hurdle history, when Istabraq won by twelve lengths in 1998 to match the record set by Insurance in the fifth Champion Hurdle, back in 1932.

Just a year after Istabraq's retirement, the two-mile division had another champion who was streets ahead of the rest. How long could Rooster Booster remain at the top? It took less than four weeks for him to be beaten, but that was over two and a half miles in the Aintree Hurdle.

Travelling strongly again, he quickened up. seemingly decisively, to go a length ahead approaching the last. This time, in contrast to his appearances over two miles, he did not go clear but might still have won had his now-regular jockey Richard Johnson not dropped his whip shortly after the final fight, Irish-trained Saccundai rallied to get his head in front just before the post.

Rooster Booster is best at around two miles and the bare form of his Champion Hurdle triumph was better than that for either of Istabraq's second or third victories in the race, though not quite on a par with Istabraq's first or with some of Istabraq's other performances.

Rooster Booster probably acts on any going and takes his hurdles fast and accurately nowadays, as well as being splendidly tough and consistent.

To look at him, a sparely-made gelding, the substantial and sustained improvement he has made has to be a surprise. No single answer emerged as to how he was able to make such startling progress, but Hobbs observed that he was more relaxed and physically stronger than last year.

Rooster Booster's groom Carol Burnett described how ‘the longer Rooster has been here, the happier and more relaxed he has become. He loves his work. When you're happy you do things better, don't you?’

The installation of a three-furlong polytrack gallop has apparently helped with the horse's home work and he reportedly has daily visits from the physio Mary Bromiley.

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Rooster Booster's owner Terry Warner, a veteran of ownership in the National Hunt game who celebrated his two-hundredth winner in February, reflected that his star had thrived during his latest summer break. One thing that didn't make Rooster Booster happy was being schooled over fences –‘he hated it’ reported Hobbs.

Warner acquired Rooster Booster in March 2000. 'I saw him run third at Chepstow and I wanted to buy a grey horse,' said the owner. ‘I offered £50,000 but Richard Mitchell said it was £60,000 or no deal. I said I would pay it subject to the vet, but when the vet went down he said Rooster Booster was so wild he couldn't get near him in the box. I thought that the horse clearly had a bit of spirit, so I would buy him and I did’.

As detailed in last year's Annual, West Country trainer Mitchell also bred Rooster Booster, from his own stallion Riverwise and broodmare Came Cottage. Riverwise was a well-bred failure as a racehorse, initially intended to run in the colours of Sheikh Mohammed.

Came Cottage was a modest novice hurdler but fairly useful winning pointer. She now has a second winner, Rooster Booster's six-year-old chestnut brother Cockatoo Ridge who won a bumper at Fontwell in April, but their seven-year-old half-sister Madame Poulet (by Gold Dust) was well beaten, for the fourth time in as many starts, on the same card.

There are further offspring by Riverwise out of Came Cottage on their way, four-year-old and yearling fillies who are with Mitchell and a two-year-old filly for whom he received an offer he couldn't refuse after the Champion Hurdle.

The Champion result has also boosted the popularity of Riverwise, who had six outside mares booked before the race and, at the time of writing, another twenty-eight added after it. Tullons Lane was a third winner from nine runners for Riverwise during the latest season, the only one not trained by a Mitchell being Rooster Booster .Thanks to Rooster Booster's extraordinary rise to the top, Riverwise is no longer a family secret. Far from it.


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