Here’s to hoping you all had a great Christmas and New Years period. The year was filled to the brim with top class racing, including a photo finish Aintree Grand National win by Tiger roll, and an action packed Cheltenham Festival which saw Native River fight off his rival might Bite to win the Cheltenham Gold Cup at odds of 5-1. It was the 90th annual running of the Gold Cup, which is held over four days annually at Cheltenham Racecourse.
Let’s focus less on the highs though, and more on obscure and unusual – in line with our usual wacky take on things. Both 2018 and the beginning of 2019 has had its fair share of zany times and so it would be remiss of me if I didn’t highlight a couple of standout moments.
Early in 2018 the Betfair trading platform experienced a first. While there’s been a few horses that have lost at odds of 1.01, and it’s not even unhead of for two horses in the same race to both reach 1.01 at some point during the event, three horses reaching those odds certainly was unheard of. That was until it happened for the first time in the site’s 18 year history in February of last year. This strange situation came about following disarray at the final fence when leader Northern Girl fell into the path of Dulce Panem , leading to Along Came Theo heading the group. To put a cherry on the cake, the eventual winner of the race, Pookie Pekan, overtook the favourite in the final furlong, at odds of a mind boggling 1000-1.
The other of our wacky racing stories relates to horse names. We’ve featured articles before relating to funny horse names (some of which were refused by the Horse Racing Authority due to their crude or unacceptable nature) and it’s an issue that has come up once again. This time though, the horse in question, Fukuto, trained by David Bridgwater at Stow-on-the-Wold, was given the thumbs up by the Racing Authority. However, they have only done so on the condition that the horse’s name is pronouned ‘Fu-Koo-To’. That’ll no doubt be to the relief of some and disappointment to others. I for one look forward to cheering the horse on!
Funnily enough, Bridgewater himself stated that “I bought him only because of his name!” “I couldn’t believe it when I saw what he was called– I had to have him.”