Cheltenham Gold Cup 2012
The 2012 Cheltenham Gold Cup, once again, featured three of the first four home in the 2011 renewal, Long Run, Kauto Star and What A Friend, with Denman having been retired, due to injury, the previous December. Defending champion Long Run was sent off 7/4 favourite, despite having been beaten by Kauto Star in both the Betfair Chase at Haydock in November and the King George VI Chase at Kempton on Boxing Day, with his old rival at 3/1 and 8/1 bar the front pair.
In any event, it was one of the 8/1 co-third favourites, the Lexus Chase winner, Synchronised, who upstaged his apparently more illustrious market rivals. Owned by J.P. McManus, trained by Jonjo O’Neill and ridden by Tony McCoy, the nine-year-old was not foot perfect at his fences, but led early on the run-in and kept on gamely to beat 50/1 outsider The Giant Bolster by 2ΒΌ lengths. Long Run finished third, a further three-quarters of a length away, having found just one pace in the closing stages. Kauto Star, running in his sixth consecutive Cheltenham Gold Cup, failed to finish, having been pulled up before halfway.
Sadly, victory in one of the major steeplechases in Britain was to prove a swansong for Synchronised, who would lose his life in the other, the Grand National, less than a month later. Attempting to become the first horse since the legendary Golden Miller, in 1934, to win both races in the same season, Synchronised fell at Becher’s Brook on the first circuit at Aintree, but fractured a leg five fences later, when running loose, and was humanely euthanised. McManus said afterwards, “It remains difficult to understand how it happened, but regrettably it did.”