Celestial Gold fills Pipe’s Bowl of joy
Pipe has had to sit and suffer a quiet year by his high standards and Celestial Gold added to a poor few months when unseating Timmy Murphy on the first circuit of the totesport Cheltenham Gold Cup last month.
But never to be underestimated, Pipe struck back as Celestial Gold (8-1) capitalised on a mistake by Take The Stand at the final fence to power away and score by seven lengths.
Celestial Gold was having only his second start since finishing seventh in the 2005 Gold Cup and his freshness showed in the early stages as the eight-year-old pulled hard under Murphy before creeping into it along the back straight on the final circuit.
By that time the race had already been deprived of the Michael Hourigan-trained Beef Or Salmon, whose suspect jumping again got the better of him when unseating Paul Carberry at the fifth, and My Will, who fell at the first.
Michael Hourigan took his horse’s mistake on the chin.
“I’m disappointed, but that’s horse racing,” said Hourigan. “He shows his best form back home so it’s not all too bad. There are plenty of races for him to win back there.
“He’s fine, he only did a circuit of the track before we caught him.
“I’ll have a chat with the owners to see if he comes over again - they might get disheartened but I won’t.”
Gold Cup fourth L’Ami was sent off the 5-2 favourite and looked a likely winner turning for home, but the ever-patient Murphy was content to sit and wait and produced his mount between the French raider and Take The Stand over the final couple of fences.
L’Ami dropped away and the Tony Dobbin-ridden Take The Stand held every chance approaching the last but a terrible blunder - which Dobbin did well to survive - put paid to his chances and left Celestial Gold in splendid isolation.
“I missed the second-last but I was always happy,” explained Murphy. “I was just a bit worried as he was a bit keen early on - I just couldn’t get him switched off.
“But Dobbs missed the last and that kind of sealed it.
“He was a million dollars in the Gold Cup and who knows what would have happened if I’d have stayed on him.”
Pipe was not present but his son and assistant David said: “He’s been crying out for a run and was very keen early as he hasn’t had a proper outing for such a long time.
“They could have gone a bit quicker and that would’ve helped him.
“He scoped badly before the Hennessy and we then aimed him for Cheltenham but things didn’t go quite right.
“We thought he would run in the Gold Cup like he did today and I would not be surprised if that was it for the season now.”
“We thought he was a Gold Cup horse for this year and we’ll definitely aim him for the race again next year,” he said.
Mighty Man had to be content with third best at the Cheltenham Festival but he emerged on top of the pile at Aintree with a convincing success in the John Smith’s And Flixton Conservative Club Liverpool Hurdle.
Last month My Way De Solzen showed the way home in the World Hurdle with Mighty Man just over four lengths adrift but the latter was 4lb better off here as he sought to take revenge.
Mighty Man held a slight advantage over his old rival at the penultimate flight but he soon increased it and clear at the last, he stayed on well to pass the post by seven lengths from his Festival conqueror, who had 13 lengths to spare over No Refuge.
Winning trainer Henry Daly admitted to a measure of relief and said of the 11-4 chance: “To be fair we have ridden him a lot handier, something we would not have been able to do earlier in the year, he would have been too free and buzzy.
“But he has been quite settled at home so we decided to just ride him third or fourth and make the best of our way home if we could.
“I think the difference is that he is just growing up, I said last year (when he was successful at this meeting) that I thought he was pretty good and obviously the second isn’t too bad either.”
Triumphant rider Richard Johnson was just as delighted.
“He’s great, he ran really well at Cheltenham and it is nice to win a big race this season,” he said.
