Galopin Des Champs confirms superstar status with successful Gold Cup defence
Paul Townend is now level with Pat Taaffe as the most successful jockey in the history of the fabled race
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Paul Townend returns to the winners' enclosure on Galopin Des Champs after his second consecutive Gold Cup
You know you've made it at Cheltenham when they either build you a statue or name a bar in your honour.
It'll only be a matter of time before Willie Mullins is immortalised in bronze, his status as the greatest jumps trainer of all-time is long established.
And we'll be raising a glass to Gold Cup winners for decades to come in the Galopin Des Champs Bar too.
Mullins isn't one to do things by half measures. He waited a long time for first a Gold Cup winner and then Al Boum Photo went back-to-back, only the seventh horse since 1924 to achieve that feat.
Four years later and he's done the double again - this time with the effortlessly classy Galopin Des Champs, who at just eight years of age could surely join an even more elusive club in 12 months and score the hat-trick.
Cheltenham's rollercoaster of emotions was on full display again. Galopin's loyal groom Adam Connolly could barely contain himself or his relief while his owner, Audrey Turley, who'd nervously watched him on the gallops at 8am this morning, was simply in dreamland.
What is it about this sport that reduces the most erudite and composed to gibbering and emotional wrecks?
When you win as much as Mullins and Paul Townend, who once again finish this meeting as top trainer and jockey, it would be easy to become detached, as all around you - from connections to fans - lose their collective heads, in the sort of giddying atmosphere you only get at the Festival.
But the Gold Cup means more and this was a fitting renewal for the 100th anniversary of jump racing's blue riband and most storied prize.
“I think he just put himself in the superstar category," said Mullins, a man not prone to hyperbole suddenly developing a strong line in superlatives.
"To do what he did the way he did it, Paul was just so positive on him. We have to say we’re coming back next year to try and win a third one if we can. We have the ability to do it, he just has to stay sound.
“The loose horse was the only concern. He hit one fence early but after that it was very easy, Paul was in position and travelling easy on him all the time.
"He’s doing everything right and he’s achieving more than I thought he could. You dream of these things.”
Born in France, Galopin won his first race behind closed doors in Auteuil as racing slowly started to recommence in the months following the start of the pandemic.
Mullins and owner Turley snatched him up a few months later and he claimed his first Festival success the following Spring, winning the final race of the behind closed doors meeting as his owner watching at home on television.
That was his last race as a footnote, he's started favourite in 13 starts since and won ten of them, banking connections £1,376,863 in the process.
Townend has ridden Galopin in his previous 13 starts and gave his stable star the most perfect ride as others tried to take the race to the champion, knowing it was the only way to get him beat.
The 33-year-old had the enviable task of stepping into the stirrups of Ruby Walsh as Mullins stable jockey but he's now banked a remarkable four Gold Cup wins - the same as Pat Taaffe, who claimed three on the immortal Arkle.
Arkle was so famous in Ireland he was known as Himself, the horse to all subsequent Second Comings must bow down to.
He captivated a Sixties generation, to the extent that any suggestion another horse could get within 20 lengths of him is viewed as treason in County Meath. Galopin Des Champs is nowhere near that plinth in the pantheon of greatness but another win like this and things might start to change.
“He was unbelievable," said Townend. "I rode him completely different to last year and he was just so brave for me.
"We were kind of in between at the last and I was afraid we hadn’t enough to go for it but it was a Gold Cup so we had to.
"He just pulled out all the stops again. We had to go through the reserves there that only the really special ones have.”
There is no doubt Galopin Des Champs is special but is he the special one?
Just another year of sleeps for another date with destiny.