Noble Yeats bidding for historic win in Grand Steeple-Chase de Paris
Plenty of good horses have had races named after them but not many receive that honour in more than one country. Dawn Run is a notable exception, with her races including a Grade 2 novice chase at Limerick as well as the mares’ novices’ hurdle at the Cheltenham Festival. She’s also commemorated by the Prix Dawn Run, a listed race over hurdles at Auteuil where she famously won the Grande Course de Haies in 1984 before losing her life in the same race two years later.
From much earlier in the twentieth century, another Irish-trained jumper is also remembered in the titles of big races in both Ireland and France, he too experiencing both triumph and tragedy at Auteuil. The achievements of Troytown just over a century ago might have been largely forgotten but his name lives on in the Troytown Handicap Chase run at Navan, which was his local track, in November, the latest renewal of which was won by The Big Dog. At Auteuil, the Prix Troytown is a Group 3 chase run in March and one of the main preparatory races for the Grand Steeple-Chase de Paris.
As well as being the last Irish-trained winner of the Grand Steeple-Chase de Paris, Troytown is also the last horse to have won both the Grand National and France’s most important chase – Jerry M, around ten years before him, is the only other horse to have won both races. Last year’s Grand National winner Noble Yeats, trained in Ireland by Emmet Mullins, therefore has the chance to emulate Troytown on both counts when he lines up for the Grand Steeple-Chase on Sunday.
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Troytown made all the running to win the Grand Steeple-Chase as a six-year-old in 1919 and lined up as second favourite for the following year’s Grand National. Favourite was the previous year’s winner Poethlyn but when he fell at the first, Troytown was again able to lead throughout, overcoming a bad mistake at the fence after Valentine's on the second circuit and coming home 12 lengths clear of his nearest pursuer. He was then sent to France in a bid to win the Grand Steeple-Chase again, this time finishing third. But tragedy struck when Troytown was turned out again for the Prix des Drags six days later as he fell with fatal consequences after breaking a leg. Permission was given for Troytown to be buried in a pet cemetery in Paris where his gravestone, decorated with shamrocks, includes the inscription ‘WE NE’ER SHALL SEE YOUR LIKE AGAIN’.
Since Troytown, the only horse from outside France to have won the Grand Steeple-Chase was Cheltenham Gold Cup winner Mandarin, trained in Lambourn by Fulke Walwyn. The rarity of that success in 1962 is one reason for his narrow victory gaining legendary status, the other being that Mandarin’s bit had snapped early in the race leaving his jockey Fred Winter with no steering for most of the contest by the end of which his mount had broken down.
A more recent Gold Cup winner to contest the Grand Steeple-Chase was Long Run, in 2014, three years after beating Denman and Kauto Star at Cheltenham. He’d fallen in the Grand National the month before his return to Auteuil where he had been a prolific winner in his early days before joining Nicky Henderson. The amateur status of his regular jockey Mr Sam Waley-Cohen meant that he was prevented from partnering Long Run in the Grand Steeple-Chase and with Ruby Walsh in the saddle instead, Long Run was prominent for a long way but faded to beat only one home among the ten finishers.
Long Run was past his prime when he contested the Grand Steeple-Chase but in Noble Yeats his owner Robert Waley-Cohen has a contender who’s at the top of his game this year. Noble Yeats stayed on to finish fourth under 11-11 when bidding to win the Grand National for the second time last month, having filled the same position in the Cheltenham Gold Cup. Noble Yeats doesn’t have the same experience around Auteuil that Long Run had, and his debut at the track in the autumn was less than encouraging as he was pulled up after jumping only four obstacles, but given that was his first run for six months and without the headgear he’s worn in the Grand National and Gold Cup, he can probably be forgiven that run.
Noble Yeats will be joined in the Grand Steeple-Chase by Franco de Port and Carefully Selected trained by Emmet Mullins’ uncle Willie. They will be bidding to win a race that Willie’s father Paddy, before his success at Auteuil with Dawn Run, had tried to win with the 1968 Irish Grand National winner Herring Gull. He was a faller in the 1970 Grand Steeple-Chase but, 50 years after Troytown, had a much happier bid for compensation in the Prix des Drags by winning it days later.
Willie Mullins seeks to win the Grande Course de Haies for a fifth time this weekend but the Grand Steeple-Chase is a race he ‘dreams of winning’ as he told Jour de Galop in an interview earlier this week whilst nominating Galopin des Champs as a possible contender one day. His first runner in the race was the Rich Ricci-owned mare Pomme Tiepy who had two attempts in 2008 (when only a five-year-old) and 2009 without figuring. The same owner’s Djakadam was a more high-profile contender in 2018, having twice finished runner-up in the Gold Cup, but he finished well beaten whilst also sustaining a career-ending injury.
Undaunted, Mullins sent no fewer than five runners for the following year’s Grand Steeple-Chase. They included Rathvinden, who had finished third in the Grand National on his previous start and Pleasant Company, who’d gone down narrowly to Tiger Roll at Aintree the year before, but it was the Irish Grand National winner Burrows Saint who fared best of his stable’s runners in fifth. There was still some Irish success in the 2019 Grand Steeple-Chase as the winner Carriacou, who will be in the field again on Sunday, was ridden by Davy Russell.
Mullins is getting closer to hitting the bullseye. His raiding party last year included dual Gold Cup winner Al Boum Photo (the first Gold Cup winner since Long Run to contest the race) and Burrows Saint but it was the outsider of his trio, Franco de Port, who ran much the best of them under Danny Mullins, jumping the last in fifth under a patient ride and digging deep for pressure to take third on the run-in. That was the best effort by an Irish horse in the Grand Steeple-Chase since Captain Christy finished second in 1975. Like Long Run, the Pat Taaffe-trained Captain Christy won two King Georges as well as a Gold Cup. Batman Senora, whose career began and ended in France, was trained by Ian Williams when he finished second in the 2003 Grand Steeple-Chase and is the only other horse trained outside France to have been placed since Mandarin won it.
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