WITH the Cheltenham Festival now 42 days away, the Sun Racing team will be bringing you their ‘Festival 50’ every day between now and 10 March.
We will salute the Prestbury Park heroes that made us fall in love with the Festival, all the way until the ‘Cheltenham roar’ signals that the wait is finally over.
One Man gained a Festival success at the fourth attempt in 1998
Number 42: One Man
Some racehorses have it all. And One Man was one of those racehorses.
Gordon Richards’ dashing grey was an aeroplane over his fences and had the speed to win over 2m and the stamina to win a pair of King George’s and a Hennessy.
He remains one of the great jumps horses of modern times – but for large parts of his career Cheltenham was his bogey track.
Were the Festival run at Ascot, Haydock or Kempton, we would probably be talking about a three-time Gold Cup winner. But his earlier failures only made victory that much sweeter.
His initial setback at the Festival came in the 1994 RSA Chase when he suffered his first defeat over fences under Neale Doughty.
He was 5-5 over the bigger obstacles going into the race but was beaten out of sight as the 3-1 favourite.
Punters were happy to let bygones be bygones as he returned in 1996 for the Gold Cup following a wide-margin King George win.
He was smashed into 11-8 favouritism and moved menacingly into contention, but he went out like a light between the last two and finished a tired sixth.
It was a similar story 12 months later, with many concluding that he would never taste success at jumps racing’s biggest meeting. How wrong they were.
One Man, who had been flying up the Greystoke gallops in the weeks prior to the race, was dropped in trip for the Champion Chase and went on to produce a steeple-chasing masterclass.
He pinged every fence under a ballsy Brian Harding and stormed up the hill to spark pandemonium in the stands.
Those who had written him off were tucking into a big old chunk of humble pie, and the result gave Richards immense satisfaction.
The horse was cruelly lost at Aintree just a few weeks later, but he left behind an incredible legacy.
