Al Boum Photo wins back-to-back Cheltenham Gold Cups | Sport

You can’t see the winner of the Cheltenham Gold Cup from the paddock as he is led back to unsaddle, but you can follow his progress thanks to the wave of acclaim that accompanies him all the way along the rails and then back up the chute towards the entrance to the famous cauldron of a winner’s enclosure.

If it seemed louder than ever here on Friday as Al Boum Photo returned – he was the favourite, after all, as well as a rare dual winner – then it was a reminder too of what will be missing from racing’s grandest occasions if, or more probably when, the experts charged with managing the coronavirus pandemic decide that racing should go behind closed doors. But at least Al Boum Photo and Paul Townend got the reception they deserved, at the end of a compelling and ever-changing race that was in the balance until the final strides.

Townend had earned it as much as his partner, having risen to the challenge of filling the riding boots of Ruby Walsh as stable jockey to Al Boum Photo’s trainer, Willie Mullins. Mullins saddled the first four winners here and Townend was aboard three, with the Gold Cup victory ensuring that he took the prize for the meeting’s leading rider for the first time.

Al Boum Photo is the first horse to win consecutive runnings of the Gold Cup since Best Mate in 2003, and the win owed much to Townend’s positional sense in a race that was run, for the most part, at a very steady pace. That ensured that the field was still tightly bunched coming down the hill for the final time, but the horses ridden prominently – Al Boum Photo, Lostintranslation and Santini – were best placed to strike for home and all made their move just after the turn for home.

Al Boum Photo and Lostintranslation took the final fence as one, with Santini just half a length behind. Lostintranslation was the first to wilt as they battled up the hill, but Santini, making only his sixth start over fences, was closing strongly in the final strides and would have needed only a few more yards of turf to overhaul the favourite.

For Mullins, the most successful trainer in Cheltenham Festival history, this was a second successive victory in a race that had famously eluded him, often in the most frustrating of circumstances, until Al Boum Photo’s win 12 months ago. This was just the winner’s second run of the season, as Mullins repeated the schedule that proved successful last year, and he will no doubt follow a similar path next season, reminiscent of the care with which Henrietta Knight steered Best Mate to three Gold Cups.

“We just decided not to break a winning formula and it’s paid off,” Mullins said. “I thought this year’s Gold Cup wasn’t anything like last year’s, and that if he had a clear round and a bit of luck, then it was all to play for.

“It’s really, really good for Paul, to take over from someone like Ruby Walsh. People said he was under pressure. Paul does his own thing, he probably rides better under a little bit of pressure. Paul has come and stamped his authority on his season in Ireland. It’s a tough act to follow, but he is Paul Townend, stable jockey to Willie Mullins, and he is top class.

“I don’t think he expected to be as forward as he was, that wasn’t what he said to me before going out, but I could see the horse just taking him there with his jumping and he didn’t want to disappoint him. That’s a rider riding with huge confidence.” For Townend, who endured a series of frustrating near-misses on the opening day’s card, Al Boum Photo is a horse that “has everything, guts as much as anything else.” He added: “At least [the week] ended well. I suppose he was a bit unknown last year and this year, he had to deliver.

“We missed a couple of fences but he has a tendency to do that. He started to jump well when we needed to, and that got us into a good position when we got to the top of the hill.

“This is the stage, before this I was having a brilliant day but this is the one, the icing on the cake. The Gold Cup is the Gold Cup and I’ll have to wait a year for another one.”

Townend was not the only one casting an eye already towards 2021. The crowd at Cheltenham to see the race was 68,859, only a fraction down on the 70,000 capacity that usually makes the pilgrimage to the west country for the final day of the Festival, and tickets will be in very short supply if Al Boum Photo returns next year to attempt to join Best Mate and Arkle as the winner in three consecutive years.

Santini, still so lightly raced, is likely to be a stern opponent once again, while Champ, a stable companion at the Nicky Henderson yard, will also be a huge contender judged on his extraordinary win in Wednesday’s RSA Chase.

Al Boum Photo, though, is now steeplechasing’s undisputed champion, and is quoted at a top price of 6-1 to make it three in a row. It is a thought to carry into the weeks and months ahead, as racing prepares for a future with no one in the grandstand.