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| Kauto and Ruby after that 5th King George |
This time of year is always a tug on the heartstrings as flat horses go to the sales and jumping horses get retired when they return to training and things do not look right. It's hard to make that decision, always hard. But never more so when it's a real Champion we are talking about.
Long ago and what seems like a lifetime away we started following a horse named Kauto Star. He was one of the 'talking horses' who arrived at Manor Farm Stables from France. Even though pedigrees in jump horses never mean as much as those of flat horses I always look. In his there was a name that stood out. But for an odd reason. Still, odd reasons often dominate which horses we follow and which we do not. And more often than not it's the odd reasons and weird coincidences which bring the most astonishing adventures our way.
Kauto Star's sire was one Village Star who was most famous in our memory as being the horse who prevented (with the help of jockey Cash Admussen) one of our all time favourites Mtoto, from winning the Arc. Village Star and Cash kept Mtoto hemmed in, and when he and Michael Roberts got out they literally flew for the finish and just failed to catch Tony Binn and John Reid who had got first run. Over the years Village Star had begun to have a few decent jumpers and we noted this one down for various reasons, not least of that his French trainer Serge Foucher had said he was the best he'd ever had and nicknamed him 'L'Extraterrestrial'. Despite these good omens we still could not have known just how brilliant he would turn out to be.
In the last years of Persian Punch we had a share in a horse at David Elsworth's yard and had the luck to visit Punch on many occasions with Desert Orchid retired in the yard. He had such presence, even when he was very old and extremely furry. We had not seen him race having only begun to go racing in the late 90's. He was such a legend to us and when we met him 'in the fur' we literally bowed to his greatness. We wanted one of our own, no doubt about it.
We followed Kauto around and genuinely fell in love with him, still oblivious to how great he might be. He had real personality, was funny, always so boisterous at the races and loving of attention. When we visited the yard if we looked at Denman first Kauto would lean out of his box and shake his head up and down demanding we come and greet him. At the races he looked at the crowd, as if he really did know he was there for us.
The great ones always know, and looking back I am pretty sure he knew before we did just how great that he would be.
Horses bring people together. Our best friends came our way courtesy of a smallish bay gelding named See More Business and over the years we have shared many 'accidental' horses which we all agreed upon as 'keepers'. Kauto was one.
We never doubted him. Like Denman seemed a dead cert to get that Gold Cup Kauto was the horse to wrest it back. He was always like no other. The two together were perfect, like chalk and cheese.
Kauto being as great as he was did not detract from anything about Desert Orchid though and we refuse to compare the two. There is no point, one was grey, one is bay. Dessie was his own person, always in control. He carried weights and did great feats no racehorse does today. The days of Golden Miller, Arkle, Flying Bolt, Mill House and Dessie will come no more. We have different criteria by which we measure a great today, and the past is safe from erosion.
We are just so grateful that Kauto came and we had our own champion. Everyone should have at least one. (And we have been blessed with more than one!) Although, it is hard to imagine that the future could possibly hold another to join their ranks.
When Donna Blake Travelling Head Lass to Paul Nicholls drove Denman and Kauto to Cheltenham she posted that it was an honour to drive the 'Golden Boys'. The name stuck, as indeed they were.
Thank you so very very much to Anthony Bromley for finding him, to Clive Smith for having enough money to bring him to our shores, and to Paul Nicholls and his team who managed his 'horse of a lifetime' absolutely brilliantly from the very beginning right to the end. To all who helped to shape and make this wonderful fabled creature, Clifford Baker, Sonja Cook, Nicholas James Child, Rose Loxon, Ruby Walsh, Mick Fitzgerald, AP McCoy, Sam Thomas and his French jockeys, and all of the team at Ditcheat.
It's been a class act which will be very very hard to equal. Ever.
What is left now are all the tributes, the papers will be full of them tomorrow and I'm off to buy them all to stick in the scrapbook!
Footnote: No idea where these photos have come from, other than the one of us at Ditcheat, but will try to rectify and credit when we have taken a moment to pause and reflect.
