Talking Horses: Norton’s Coin upset belongs to different Cheltenham age

A n abiding personal memory of the Cheltenham Festival is the sound of almost complete silence after the 1990 Gold Cup, as 60,000 racegoers slowly absorbed the fact that Norton’s Coin, a 100-1 shot saddled by a Welsh dairy farmer who trained a few jumpers as a hobby, had just beaten the country’s most popular chaser, Desert Orchid.

Thirty-three years later, Sirrell Griffiths’s win with Norton’s Coin remains the biggest upset of all at the Festival, not just in the Gold Cup but in any race at the meeting. And when set against some of the likely outcomes at the 2023 Festival next week – when Willie Mullins is 1-7 to be the leading trainer and the Irish range from 1-9 to 1-25 to have the most winners – there is a distinct sense that it belongs to an entirely different age, in fact, almost a different sport.

Mullins’s near-total dominance at the meeting over the last decade is, inevitably, a major factor, but the Festival does not feel quite so … unpredictable as it once did. If Mullins does not win, then Gordon Elliott, Henry de Bromhead or Nicky Henderson probably will.

The hunter chase is now the only race in which a permit holder like Griffiths can stand any realistic chance of success – and even that succumbed to the Mullins machine 12 months ago. Billaway, the 13-8 favourite with Patrick Mullins, the trainer’s son, in the saddle, was one of 11 clear favourites to win over the four days of the meeting, while Constitution Hill, the Supreme Novice Hurdle winner, was joint-favourite at 9-4. Three second-favourites also won, at odds of 6-5, 2-1 and 5-2, and in all, 15 of the 28 races were won by a runner at 11-4 or shorter.

The meeting’s handicaps have also been going the punter’s way in recent seasons. Over the last five