One of the oddest sights at the last Cheltenham Festival was the talented novice chaser Edwulf doing a fair impression of a gazelle in the late stages of the National Hunt Chase, his powerful stride suddenly becoming a most unnatural lope. “Odd” is how it looks now, in the comforting knowledge that he made a full recovery; at the time it was a cause for alarm and then despair.
Having been in second place after the last of 25 fences, Edwulf slowed to a stop in a matter of yards. As the cameras averted their gaze, one TV pundit mourned “what seems to have happened to him”, perhaps knowing, as viewers did not, that Edwulf had then collapsed and was being tended by vets behind green screens.
Sometimes, a horse rises from behind those screens to relieved appreciation from the grandstands, having got its breath back after 10 minutes or so. Edwulf was still on the ground 40 minutes later, having been slid off to the side of the track so the last race could be run. There was no reason for hope and in the press room that evening there was an undercurrent of irritation at what seemed an unjustifiable delay by racecourse staff in confirming the inevitable bad news.
It was most surprising to learn the next morning that Edwulf was, in fact, still breathing. It was amazing when he showed no lasting effects just a fortnight later as he returned to his Kilkenny stable, and nothing short of flabbergasting when he won the Irish Gold Cup last month as a 33-1 chance on only his second run since the day he appeared to be on his way out.
“I never had a horse do what he did,” said his jockey, Derek O’Connor, after that wildly unlikely moment of glory. “He ran himself into the ground for me at Cheltenham. We thought his career was over but he’s after coming back to his best.”
News
Nigel Twiston-Davies will head to the Cheltenham Festival feeling that his horses are in form and that his luck is in, after Mr Antolini survived a 15-minute stewards' inquiry following the Imperial Cup at Sandown on Saturday.
Mr Antolini and Jamie Bargary tightened up Call Me Lord on the run to the line but prevailed by a neck, which was enough to tip the balance in their favour.
"We get angry about the weather. It stopped us running in a veterans' race last week," Twiston-Davies said. "We came here instead and it's been very successful."
The winner is not entered at Cheltenham next week, meaning that a £100,000 bonus on offer for following up in any race at the Festival will go unclaimed.
Tips
Market Rasen 2.00 Ballyvic Boru 2.30 Rio Quinto 3.05 Miss Conway 3.35 Knocknamona 4.10 Supakalanistic (nap) 4.40 Milly Baloo 5.10 Calipso Collonges
Warwick 2.20 Starcrossed 2.50 Golden Vision 3.25 Champagne George 3.55 Gamain (nb) 4.30 Royal Escape 5.00 Barrakilla 5.30 Clondaw Anchor
On Friday Edwulf gets a chance to take his story into the realm of Hollywood wish fulfilment when he lines up in jump racing’s most prestigious contest, the Cheltenham Gold Cup. He is once more unfancied and can be backed at 25-1 but somehow this is not off‑putting in the case of a horse who has so thoroughly beaten the odds in the past year.
“It was an amazing recovery,” recalls Liam Kearns, Cheltenham’s head vet. There were several low points, including when Edwulf went into a fit as he lay on the track and later that night when it was discovered he had gone blind. But Kearns was sustained by the knowledge that the horse had not suffered any bone break or spinal injury, no trauma that would naturally lead to sudden death, so he and his team steadily nursed Edwulf to a point the next day when, at a nearby equine hospital, he was standing and eating and had recovered his vision.
As for what caused Edwulf to suffer such distress, Kearns says: “He didn’t fit in with the typical signs we would see with heat stress. The neurological signs he showed would be more consistent with an acute oxygen deficit to the brain. You sometimes see it in triathletes, where, as well as showing fatigue, they show incoordination.”
Kearns cannot recall a case like it in his 30 years working at racecourses and sees no reason why Edwulf should suffer a repeat or be troubled by any memory of it when he returns to Cheltenham. “I would say not. He recovered well, he’s been back in training, doing what he was bred to do, galloping with other horses, the natural thing for the horse to do. So I wouldn’t see any after-effects from that point of view.”
At all events, if something does go wrong this week, Kearns and his team are well placed to support any possible recovery. “There is a very experienced team at Cheltenham and we are afforded any facilities we want for the care of the horses. We have people on foot as well as people in mobile vehicles to cover the track. These horses are well looked after at home, veterinary-wise and otherwise, and our job is to maintain that high level of care at the racecourse.”
