• Winner had not been working well before Festival
• Frustrated punters had backed horse for Gold CupQuite a few of the races this week have had a sense of inevitability about them as yet another Willie Mullins-trained,Ruby Walsh-ridden rocket cruised to the lead and that was never more genuine than in the case of Vautour, the horse who should have been running in Friday’s Gold Cup. Dropped at short notice into the shorter, or easier Ryanair Chase,this powerful beast romped round to score by a very comfortable six lengths.
Any horse achieving success at a third consecutive Festival ought to be an occasion for celebration but some of the air was taken out of this balloon by his controversial reassignment on Tuesday morning, after months in which the horse’s owner, and wealthy Ricci,had insisted the Gold Cup was his target. And it seemed here that Ricci had some lingering regret about the volte-face, describing this victory as “an odd feeling”.
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Source: theguardian.com