Despite Leopardstown’s long history of great performances by outstanding horses, Thursday’s Christmas festival crowd was left struggling for comparisons after a spectacular display by Galopin Des Champs in the Savills Chase.
The reigning Cheltenham Gold Cup-winner produced a performance for the ages to annihilate a quality field in the Grade One €175,000 feature.
Twice beaten since his Blue Riband victory in March, the Willie Mullins-trained star made a mockery of suggestions that the effort of that Cheltenham success may have left its mark on him.
Back at the scene of his spectacular first win over fences two years previously, and back to the positive tactics that first announced him as a major talent, Galopin Des Champs routed a quality field that included those with previously legitimate hopes of dethroning him at Cheltenham next March.
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Beforehand, Gerri Colombe’s rider Jack Kennedy had described the race as “basically a Gold Cup.” Except no Gold Cup has been won with such swaggering ease since Arkle, and no top-flight chase at Leopardstown with such aplomb.
Content to have last year’s winner Conflated for company to the third last, Paul Townend took the race by the scruff of the neck from there. By then, another Gold Cup winner in A Plus Tard was well beaten. Just a fence later everyone else had joined him.
Far from being asked for everything, Galopin Des Champs still managed to sweep up the straight, the 6-4 favourite sluicing through testing conditions with apparent nonchalance and passing the post a whopping 23 lengths clear.
Gerri Colombe plugged on gamely to hold the winner’s 80-1 stable companion Capodanno by a head for second. But the old line about there being no second has rarely looked more applicable. The football reporting gag about forgetting the time and getting the date right didn’t look inappropriate either.
Having slipped a couple of pounds from the heady 180 rating achieved in the Gold Cup, handicap wonks are now faced with the task of mathematically quantifying what an official 15,778 Leopardstown crowd were privileged to witness.
Although Fastorslow, the horse that had beaten Galopin Des Champs twice, was taken out in the morning due to ground conditions, and the King George hero Hewick’s ability to upset the odds is unrivalled, bookies couldn’t be blamed for slashing Galopin to evens to retain his Gold Cup crown.
“I didn’t know what to expect as his work had been a little bit indifferent at home. We tried a few different things with him and obviously they must have worked!” beamed Mullins who acclaimed a “huge performance.”
He was hardly exaggerating. Even Best Mate’s success in the race 20 years ago wasn’t achieved in such fashion. And while hurdling stars like Hurricane Fly and Istabraq were prolific around Leopardstown, this still looked a singular performance in terms of style.
Townend’s determination to change the restrained tactics that saw Galopin Des Champs finish only third to Fastorslow in last month’s Durkan paid off to spectacular effect.
“Fair play to Willie, he obviously underperformed at Punchestown on two days and we had to respond here. I thought he jumped much better, he enjoyed himself much better and he got in a lovely rhythm,” the champion jockey said.
“He was so simple to ride - the last day I was looking to jump to keep me in the race but here he was lining up the fences himself and taking them on. He was a dream to ride and the Galopin Des Champs I was expecting turned up,” he added.
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On the day, Galopin Des Champs completed a Mullins hat-trick at Leopardstown and perhaps only he could have elbowed stable companion Gaelic Warrior from centre stage after the latter’s own superb Grade One victory at Limerick.
The novice made it two from two over fences in a Faugheen Chase where not even a daring attempt to get up his inside by stable companion Il Etait Temps could shake his dominance.
It certainly looked to shake his rider Patrick Mullins whose most strenuous task appeared to come after the line when gesturing angrily at his cousin Danny who’d ridden the runner-up.
“I told Danny there will be a gap on my inside going to the second last and not to go for it. He didn’t listen to me. Luckily, he didn’t get the two of us beaten,” the champion amateur said.
Gordon Elliott and Jack Kennedy, left to lick their wounds after Gerri Colombe’s eclipse, had their third top-flight winner of the week when Irish Point ran away with the Jack De Bromhead Christmas Hurdle.
Elliott even had his own hat-trick on the day with victories in the first at Limerick and the last at Leopardstown.
But as benchmark performances go, Galopin Des Champs in the Savills is likely to be referenced long after all that is just a footnote.
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