Well-backed favourite is trainer’s fifth winner in race
Jockey Townend out on his own with five successes
A capacity crowd had squeezed into the grandstands on Friday hoping to see a football legend lift the festival’s biggest prize, but the greatest trainer in National Hunt history had other ideas. The Gold Cup was one of the last races at the meeting to elude Willie Mullins until his first win in 2019. Now he has five, joining Tom Dreaper, Arkle’s trainer, as the co-holder of the all-time record, after Gaelic Warrior’s relentless charge up the hill to an eight-length success.
Paul Townend, meanwhile, is now out on his own as the only rider to win five Gold Cups, one more than Pat Taaffe, who steered Arkle to all three of his victories in the 1960s.
Gaelic Warrior is a different brand of steeplechaser to Al Boum Photo and Galopin Des Champs, who both recorded a pair of victories for Mullins and Townend. Those were French-breds, while Gaelic Warrior was foaled in Germany, sired by a Group One winner on the Flat. But his triumph was perhaps the most decisive of the five, and all the more commendable as he was pulling for his head in the early stages and running over the Gold Cup trip of three and a quarter miles for the first time.
