Needless to say, it has been a while. Over the last 12
months, some of the content you were previously used to seeing on The Parade
Ring was seen on our other special Gold Cup and Royal Ascot websites, while I
spent the second half of 2016 writing for an online tipping service.
Other commitments have been in the way recently, commitments
which still exist, and for that reason the end of the National Hunt season will
not include the vast quantities of content which have been customary at this
period in other National Hunt seasons (we will be back in action over the summer). However, this is still The Parade Ring,
and it wouldn’t be Cheltenham without some content for our ever-loyal readers
and followers.
This year's Gold Cup has been truly decimated by withdrawals, injuries and
tragedies. The last two winners, Don
Cossack and Coneygree have been
retired and won’t be seen on a racetrack again. The racing world is also poorer
for the deaths of Vautour and Many Clouds. These losses themselves
left us with a Gold Cup bereft of many of the game’s stars, and Thistlecrack looked to have very strong
claims in a weakened field, with only some stamina doubts remaining. But yet
again fortune wasn’t on our side as news emerged this week that he would miss
the rest of the season.
This leaves us with a horrifically weakened but intriguingly
open Gold Cup field. Thistlecrack’s stablemate,
Native River heads the betting at 3/1,
a strong but certainly not unbeatable favourite. There are plenty of other contenders and I'd like to take a look at them one by one - beginning today with Cue Card.
Can Cue Card Win The Gold Cup?
Older readers will recall the extent of my fondness for this
horse and I would love nothing more than to see him win a Gold Cup. He seems to be in top form and his class
should never be in question.
However, Cue Card is
11 now. The last horse aged 10 years or older to win a Gold Cup was Cool Dawn in 1998, and there have been
72 subsequent failed attempts. Worse still, the last horse aged 11 years or
older to win the Gold Cup was What A
Myth in 1969 at the age of 12. Indeed, the last horse older than 10 to win
any festival grade 1 was Moscow Flyer back
in 2005, and 54 have tried and failed since that.
Furthermore, only one horse has won a festival Grade 1 in
the last 15 years with over 32 career starts under their belt, from 111
runners. Cue Card now has 35 career
starts to his name. I’ll try not to labour the point as I think that these
stats speak for themselves. I would love to see Cue Card be the exception but history suggests that the odds are
stacked against him.
