Positive reflections lead us to inaccurate retrospective. This was maybe the best race of all time, despite the heartbreak I endured watching it.
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GG Jumps Journal – Remembering the 2015 King George VI Chase
Gold Cups, with their enduring lustre, and Grand Nationals for their glory, almost always fill the mind when recalling the greatest jumps races of all time. Red Rum’s first and third Grand Nationals, Arkle’s first and Desert Orchid and Long Run’s only Gold Cups spring to the conscious immediately, but rarely does an edition of the King George VI Chase earn a mention.
Perhaps because Desert Orchid and Kauto Star won their nine King Georges without too much in-running drama (the latter was too busy munching his final fences to be worried about the runner-up), the race fails to provide too many runnings which stick out. Florida Pearl’s 2001 triumph occasionally breaks the glass, potentially because of the absence of a Cheltenham Festival due to Foot and Mouth nine months previously.
What stuns me though, is not only that the 2015 King George VI Chase is absent in hearts and minds, but that it is not an automatic top five for everyone of the past two generations of racing. It was an extraordinary race, one which I remember for a crushing sense of heartache.
For I loved Vautour. And this was the day Santa and Rudolph, disguised as Paddy Brennan and Cue Card, snatched away his most treasured present.
The Contenders
Neither Cue Card or Vautour was the favourite. That honour belonged to the intimidating Don Cossack, who had won his past four races for Gordon Elliott and Gigginstown by a combined 53 lengths, including a 26-length walloping of Cue Card in the Melling Chase back in April. He had won eight of his last nine races, including demolition jobs in the Punchestown Gold Cup, with Cue Card in fourth, and the Down Royal Champion Chase, meeting with defeat only when upset in the Ryanair Chase at the Cheltenham Festival.
Against him, Cue Card was a horse reborn at the start of the 2015/16 season. His looked to be a career on the wane, one ultimately of unfulfilled promise after such a thrilling start. Up to October 2015, he had won a Ryanair Chase and a Betfair Chase, as well as contriving to throw away the 2013 King George from the jaws of victory, but 2014/15 saw him go winless, his second in the Melling Chase his best finish, while he was only fifth in the King George as Silviniaco Conti went back-to-back.
However, a revival in the Charlie Hall at Wetherby was followed by a thumping seven-length win over Silviniaco Conti for his second Betfair Chase. All of a sudden, the nine-year-old was thriving again, a new lease of life ensuring he was a 9/2 shot and third favourite to Don Cossack despite those two heavy defeats to Elliott’s monster.
Splitting the pair in the betting was Vautour. The 2014 Supreme Novices’ Hurdle winner had won nine of his ten races under rules to that point, slipping up only after a cataclysmic jumping error spoiled his chance in a novice Grade 1 at Leopardstown the previous season. He arrived at Kempton with the tallest reputation, despite the betting speaking to Don Cossack’s chances, having put in arguably the greatest display of jumping ever seen at Cheltenham when a 15-length waltzing winner of the JLT Novices’ Chase, as it was known then, over 2m4f.
Willie Mullins was already a brilliant trainer, but even just a decade ago, the sense of inevitability surrounding his runners in big races was not yet apparent. When Vautour had to grind out a victory in Ascot’s 1965 Chase, in receipt of 5lb from runner-up Ptit Zig, it appeared as though the step up to open company could find him out.
The stage was set.
How the Race Unfolds
Belying any fears about the step up to 3m for the first time, Vautour presses the King George hat-trick seeker Silviniaco Conti from the very start at the head of affairs. Don Cossack takes up the box seat in third, with Cue Card ridden with restraint among the nine-strong field.
A brief pause is worthwhile to highlight the depth this King George possessed. Silviniaco Conti’s record spoke for itself, while Smad Place arrived after his 12-length annihilation in the Hennessy Gold Cup the previous month off a mark of 155. He had won at Kempton already that season too.
Al Ferof was in his late-career stay at Dan Skelton’s, but even he, at the age of ten, was on his way to beating Ptit Zig off level weights in Huntingdon’s Peterborough Chase when that horse fell at the last, and in more convincing fashion than Vautour had. He still went off at 16/1 despite that, while at 25/1 was two-time novice Grade 1 winner Valseur Lido, in the Gigginstown second cap yet trained by Mullins.
Even the big outsiders would go off far shorter in most King Georges. Irish Cavalier bossed a strong intermediate chase on his return prior to going off 40/1 here, while Ballynagour was the 66/1 rank outsider despite having only been beaten a head by Silviniaco Conti in Aintree’s Grade 1 Bowl back in the spring, and was only four lengths adrift of Cue Card in the Charlie Hall.
For the first circuit, little changes, other than Ballynagour increasingly failing to live with the pace at the back. Silviniaco Conti jumps boldly and straighter than Vautour, but the clinical efficiency with which the latterand Ruby Walsh jump breaks the dual King George champion, who is eventually pulled up by Noel Fehily once the race has begun in earnest.
Rarely, when there are three or more principals, do they all give their running, but that is what makes this King George so magical and painstaking to review. Don Cossack, maybe the most impressively, overcomes a significant flat spot in-running, dropping towards the rear as they pass their point of departure, at which point Walsh and Vautour have taken a clear lead.
The six-year-old, with his high, regal head carriage, looks as if he is merely jogging as Walsh hits the accelerator to put the field under pressure. Valseur Lido and Irish Cavalier can no longer stick to the climbing wall, Silviniaco Conti sinks through the cracks, and Smad Place joins Don Cossack in being under pressure, though responding.
A tremendous jump at the fourth last puts Vautour in even greater control, but his tendency to correct left at his fences at right-handed Kempton is apparent throughout. Turning for home, Cue Card and Don Cossack are the only chasers worth their salt, the brace of greys in Al Ferof and Smad Place putting up a worthy show, but unable to join the big leagues.
Another correction left almost helps Vautour three from home, as he cuts across Cue Card, with Don Cossack forced even wider, seemingly beaten for the first time. Yet, Brian Cooper begins to find a rhythm on the favourite, who is upsides Cue Card, a length adrift of Vautour, when diving through the second last to the floor.
Suddenly, it’s a two-horse race, but surely a one-horse race? Vautour is two lengths clear, Walsh has drawn his whip and there is a response from the gazelle in equine form. However, it is not as convincing as first thought. Brennan, flailing away on Cue Card, clearly senses the opportunity between the last two as his gallant mount responds in earnest.
The last fence is critical. Vautour, so often the horse to jump his rivals into submission, puts in an extra stride that means his momentum is stalled on landing for a split second. Still a length up, he maintains that advantage for half of Kempton’s tiny run-in. But Mullins’ superstar is flat out to stay 3m, and Cue Card eats up the ground.
There is a brief possibility that the nod has favoured Vautour against the far rail, but the nosebanded warrior has caught him. I’d have traded my best Christmas present that year for a different result, but the memory of that startling, heart-stopping conclusion ten years on, sustains a dear love for Kempton’s great race.
GG Jumps Journal – The Definitive Grade 1 Ranking So Far This Season
Big races come thick and fast during racing’s post-Christmas silly season, but here is the Jumps Journal’s definitive ranking of our Grade 1 winners in Great Britain and Ireland so far. GG Jumps Journal – GB & Ire Grade 1 Winners So Far Ranked 9. Golden Ace – Fighting Fifth Hurdle (29th November) For a…
Wed 10 Dec 2025Tip for the Weekend
An each-way shout for this week goes to Colonel Mustard should Lorna Fowler’s admirable ten-year-old run in the Grade 1 Long Walk Hurdle at Ascot this weekend. Enough question marks surround the more favoured contenders, while there is danger in underestimating what Colonel Mustard achieved in winning the Lismullen Hurdle at Navan last time out as he belatedly learns how to win races in his grand age. He is worthy of a chance in this line-up.
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