Tribute to A Plus Tard as Cheveley Park Stud's 2022 Cheltenham Gold Cup winner is retired

The announcement of A Plus Tard’s retirement after trailing home last in the Savills Chase at Leopardstown just after Christmas perhaps won’t have come as too much of a surprise. The winner of that race, reigning Gold Cup winner Galopin des Champs, had already taken A Plus Tard’s crown at Cheltenham last March when A Plus Tard, starting second favourite to a rival two years his junior, was pulled up, having been unable to recover from being badly hampered at the seventeenth fence.

Twelve months earlier it had been a very different story when A Plus Tard gained what turned out to be the final victory of his career, his eighth all told, in the 2022 Cheltenham Gold Cup.

Sent off the 3/1 favourite in an open-looking edition, a close race indeed looked on the cards for much of the contest thanks to just an ordinary pace on the first circuit, with plenty still in with a chance three out. Quickening off the bend, it was Henry de Bromhead’s other runner, the previous year’s winner Minella Indo who was the first to strike for home, but A Plus Tard was sent in pursuit by Rachael Blackmore, took over in front jumping the last where Minella Indo made a mistake and then stormed up the hill in remarkable fashion to win by 15 lengths.

As well as Minella Indo in second, A Plus Tard also had Al Boum Photo, the 2019 and 2020 winner, back in sixth.

With a peak rating of 178, A Plus Tard might not have been the very best chaser to win the Gold Cup in recent years but he’s not far behind the likes of Galopin Des Champs (181) who looked at least as good as ever in the Savills, and the 2016 winner Don Cossack (183) whose Gold Cup victory was his tenth win from his last eleven completed starts. But A Plus Tard won the Gold Cup by the widest margin since Master Oats won by the same margin in more testing conditions in 1995.

A Plus Tard’s rider, on the other hand, made history, becoming the first female rider to win the Gold Cup. Blackmore might have achieved that feat a year sooner had she maintained her other long-standing partnership with Minella Indo. The only time Blackmore didn’t ride A Plus Tard during his career with de Bromhead was in the 2020 Savills Chase which A Plus Tard won under Darragh O’Keeffe, a race in which the better-fancied Minella Indo and Blackmore came to grief at the eighth.

The Gold Cup wasn’t A Plus Tard’s first wide-margin success at the Cheltenham Festival as he’d given his rider an exhilarating first success at the meeting with an impeccable display of jumping in the penultimate running of the Close Brothers Novices’ Handicap Chase. That was a very smart effort from A Plus Tard whose other win that season had come when beating the subsequent Arkle winner Duc des Genievres at Naas.

Previously useful over hurdles in France where he won twice for Dominique Bressou, A Plus Tard never had more than four runs a season for de Bromhead. After his first Festival victory, an initial try at around three miles in the Champion Novice Chase at Punchestown, where A Plus Tard finished third to Delta Work, suggested the trip stretched his stamina, which resulted in his second season over fences focussing on a return to shorter distances.

In fact, he became the only horse to beat Willie Mullins’ top-class two-miler Chacun Pour Soi in his first seven races in Ireland when upsetting the odds-on favourite in the 2019 Paddy’s Reward Club Chase at Leopardstown.

But rather than the Queen Mother Champion Chase, A Plus Tard’s target at Cheltenham that season was the Ryanair in which he finished third to main market rival Min after starting the well-backed 7/4 favourite. A Plus Tard formed one of a trio of top-class chasers to emerge from Cheveley Park Stud’s quest to find a Gold Cup winner. The other members of this trio, Allaho and Envoi Allen, were both later successful in the Ryanair, Allaho winning it twice, though as detailed below the Gold Cup was the owners’ ‘Holy Grail’.

It was that dramatic win in the 2020 Savills Chase, when he stayed on to deny Kemboy a second win in the race, on just his second try at three miles, which took A Plus Tard a step closer to achieving that ambition. But it also proved to be a poignant success coming just a day before David Thompson, the owner of Cheveley Park with wife Patricia, passed away.

A Plus Tard’s three participations in the Gold Cup have already been mentioned – Minella Indo beat him a length and a quarter in his first attempt in 2021 when the hat-trick seeking Al Boum Photo and 2018 winner Native River completed the frame. But besides the 2022 Gold Cup, there was another race which showed A Plus Tard at his very best.

That was on his reappearance in his Gold Cup-winning season in the Betfair Chase, becoming the only Irish-trained winner of the Haydock race to date. Tanking into the race under a patient ride, A Plus Tard barely came off the bridle in pulling 22 lengths clear of the latest winner, Royale Pagaille, with Bristol de Mai, sent off second favourite in his bid to win a fourth Betfair Chase, pulling up.

A Plus Tard was himself pulled up when odds on to win the Betfair Chase again a year later, showing the first signs of a loss of form from a chaser who’d been a model of consistency hitherto, never previously having finished out of the first three since coming to Ireland.

The last word on A Plus Tard belongs with David Thompson’s son Richard, Director of Cheveley Park Stud:

"My father and I sat down in early 2018 and agreed a plan to buy some National Hunt horses to be trained in Ireland with the aim of winning the Cheltenham Gold Cup. Just over four years later, we achieved this objective when Rachael Blackmore rode A Plus Tard to victory in front of 70,000 people at the first Cheltenham Festival after Covid. My father watched A Plus Tard win the Savills Chase in a thrilling finish on television on December 28th 2020. He died the very next day.

"It was the last horse race he ever watched. A Plus Tard was also the first Cheltenham winner in the red, white and blue Cheveley Park Stud colours and also Rachael Blackmore’s first winner at Cheltenham in the 2019 Listed Close Brothers Novices’ Chase. Rachael rode him to five of his six victories and Darragh O’Keeffe rode him in the other one.

"For all of the above reasons, A Plus Tard will always be a very special horse in the history of my parents’ ownership of Cheveley Park Stud. A special thank you to Henry de Bromhead and all the team at Knockeen and to Rachael too. To win the Cheltenham Gold Cup is the Holy Grail of National Hunt racing and we will never forget 18th March 2022."

A Plus Tard, who has just turned ten, will spend his retirement at Cheveley Park Stud which was also where Party Politics, who won the 1992 Grand National in Patricia Thompson’s colours, lived out the rest of his days.