One morning last winter Cue Card went out to exercise at Colin Tizzard’s yard. He did not get far. “He’d cut himself really badly under a fetlock in the King George and been stood in his box for a month,” the trainer says. “Now he couldn’t even canter up the gallop.”
On Saturday a little less than a year later, Cue Card will return to the King George VI Chase at Kempton Park as the leading British-trained contender and what has happened to the nine-year-old in between tells a story of profound changes in National Hunt racing too. What was once a quiet country pursuit is now a fiercely competitive and professional sport. Its elite athletes get the care and attention to match.
“Ben Brain [Tizzard’s vet] came up and put a camera in through his nose,” Tizzard says. “Then we cantered him around and we stood in the middle watching it on a computer screen.
“The epiglottis is what comes up to stop food going down the air pipe and the skin came up and got trapped in his throat. When he was cantering around, you could see it flip up. His windpipe was blocked by the epiglottis. They used to just scope them in a stable at rest and you couldn’t really see what the problem was, but now you can gallop them around and around and, when they make a noise, you can see why it’s happening.
“Then they cut the skin off with a laser and they did that with a camera, too, and sent it to the owner so that he could see what had happened.”
At the time Cue Card won four Grade One races. Now he has five, thanks to a defeat of Silviniaco Conti, the King George winner for the past two seasons, in the Betfair Chase at Haydock Park last month. Cue Card simply galloped away from Silviniaco Conti, implying that he is not just as good as ever this season but possibly a little better.
Tizzard does not explain Cue Card’s return to peak form as being simply the result of his wind operation but he is convinced that his chaser is a much happier and healthier horse than 12 months ago, when he was only fifth behind Silviniaco Conti. Cue Card is also more composed and mature than he was in December 2013, when he seemed to have the race won only to falter abruptly between the final two fences.
“Perhaps it was trapped then,” Tizzard says. “His head came up a bit as if there was something wrong but then he jumped the fence and stayed on again. But there’s lots of factors, it’s not just the trapped epiglottis. He ran at Aintree and Punchestown after he had that done [finishing second and fourth in Grade One events].
“We all deal in low-grade viruses, I’d say. It’s not that they’re stood over the stable door with a dirty nose and coughing, it’s just that they’re not as good as they were the year before. It’s no different to humans really. Sometimes you don’t really want to do anything and then you come back after a break and you can. It’s beautiful. We don’t really know what it was but he’s back in rude health.”
Another factor could be Tizzard’s decision to separate the racehorses from the cows at his 500-acre farm a few miles from Yeovil. The two businesses had operated side by side from 1998, when Tizzard started training with 10 horses, but the horses are now stabled in a purpose-built 50-box yard, separated from the main farm by the A30. It is a state-of-the-art facility that Joe Tizzard, Colin’s son and Cue Card’s jockey for much of the gelding’s career, will take over in due course as the family business develops.
“We just felt at the end of last year that we weren’t going anywhere,” Tizzard says. “That’s why we decided to have two separate businesses, have all the cattle in one place. We’ve got a separate racing yard now and it’s a lot better. Building a new stable was making a statement. Hopefully we can attract some big spenders and buy some nice horses.
“In the next five years, Joe will take on the licence, there’s no doubt about that, and we’re all ambitious. We want to have runners [at the biggest tracks] every time.. Our ambition would be to have 100 good horses.”
Success on Saturday would take Cue Card two-thirds of the way towards completing jumping’s new Chase Triple Crown and within sight of the £1m bonus for a horse that can win the Betfair Chase, the King George and then the Cheltenham Gold Cup. For Tizzard, though, the achievement would mean more than the money.
“The horse has been brilliant for us and, if we could win a King George or a Gold Cup with him, it’s like a gold medal. You never forget it for the rest of your life. As for the million pounds, obviously it would be lovely to get it but, if we won the King George and the Gold Cup, that would be enough. I think the reason they’re putting it up is because it’s nigh-on impossible to win I think, but we’re the only ones still in.”
Every King George winner since 2005 has been trained either by Paul Nicholls or Nicky Henderson, and the challenge from Ireland this year is as strong as it has been for a decade. Yet Tizzard’s confidence in the resurgent Cue Card is undisguised. “I had it in my mind that he had to make the running,” the trainer says. “Then, when he came second to Silviniaco Conti, he harried us all the way and Cue Card didn’t get home. Now, we don’t have to make the running. We can sit third or fourth and let them tow us into the race and that’s where I think the improvement’s going to come.
“The frightening part about Haydock was how easily he did it. It was brilliant. He came away without having a race, really. It’s always in the back of your mind that he’s been there a few times already and hasn’t won but I think he’s in better form than he’s ever been.
“He was trained to win the Champion Bumper as a four-year-old, so he’s been in bloody hot races all his life and had five seasons of it. You start to think that there’s only so many miles in the horse. And then he comes out this year and he’s as good as ever.”
