Best Mate
Two decades after suffering a fatal heart attack, as a ten-year-old, in the Haldon Gold Cup Chase at Exeter on November 1, 2005, Best Mate remains the co-thirteenth highest-rated steeplechaser in the history of Timeform. Of course, he is best remembered for winning the Cheltenham Gold Cup three years running, in 2002, 2003 and 2004, making him one of just three horses since World War II – the others being Cottage Rake and Arkle – to do so.
Owned by the late Jim Lewis, trained by Henrietta Knight at West Lockinge Farm, near Wantage, Oxfordshire and ridden, for all bar four of his races under Rules, by Jim Culloty, Best Mate won 14 of his 22 starts, including 11 of his 16 steeplechases, and amassed over £1 million in prize money. He was good enough to finish a never-nearer second, beaten just threequarters of a length, in the Supreme Novices’ Hurdle at the Cheltenham Festival in 2000 and, having made a successful transition to fences, was ante-post favourite for the Arkle Challenge Trophy before an outbreak of foot and mouth disease caused the Festival to be rescheduled, and then abandoned altogether in 2001.
In 2002, Best Mate beat 17 opponents, including defending champion Looks Like Trouble, to win his first Cheltenham Gold Cup and returned to Prestbury Park the following year to become the first horse since L’Escargot, in 1971, to win the ‘Blue Riband’ event twice. In 2004, he duly completed the hat-trick, becoming the first horse since Arkle, in 1966, to do so, but was denied the chance of completing a four-timer when suffering a training injury just over a week before the 2005 renewal. Reflecting on his tragic death on his reappearance the following November, Jim Lewis said, “It’s been a privilege to own such a great horse. There have been very few as good…I will never forget him and what he did.”