Who Won The First Gold Cup?

The first horse race to be known as the Cheltenham Gold Cup took place in July 1819. This event was a flat race, and it was contested over a distance of 3 miles on Cleeve Hill, which overlooks the present racecourse. The inaugural winner, Spectre, won a prize of 100 guineas for his owner.

The Cheltenham Gold Cup was first run in the form of a jumps race on March 12, 1924. A prize of £685 was awarded to the owner of the winning horse, Red Splash. The event originally took place on what is now known as the "Old Course" at Cheltenham. In its early years it was overshadowed at the Cheltenham Festival by another race, the National Hunt Chase, a four mile chase which had been established in 1904.

The Gold Cup was abandoned in 1931 (because of frost) and 1937 (flooding), but the five intervening years saw the emergence of the most successful horse in the event's history. All five races from 1932 to 1936 were won by Golden Miller, who also won the Grand National in 1934.

During World War II the Gold Cup was cancelled twice, in 1943 and 1944. The first multiple winner of the post-war years was Cottage Rake, who won the three runnings from 1948 to 1950. Cottage Rake was trained in Ireland by Vincent O'Brien, and his successes helped to popularize the Gold Cup, and the Festival itself, with the Irish public.

In 1959 the Gold Cup was switched to Cheltenham's "New Course", and since then this has been the regular track used for the event. In the mid 1960s the race was dominated by Arkle, who won three consecutive runnings from 1964 to 1966. Such was Arkle's perceived superiority before the last of these victories that he was given a starting price of 1/10 (a £10 bet would have won £1). This remains the shortest priced winner in the race's history.

The first commercial sponsorship of the race was by the company Piper Champagne, which began supporting the event in 1975 and continued until 1979. Since 1980 it has been sponsored by The Tote (now known as Totesport).

The most remarkable feat in the Gold Cup by a trainer came in 1983, when Michael Dickinson was responsible for all of the first five horses to finish – Bregawn, Captain John, Wayward Lad, Silver Buck and Ashley House. The 1986 winner, Dawn Run, is the only horse to have ever won both this race and the leading hurdle event, the Champion Hurdle. One of the most popular horses to win the Gold Cup was Desert Orchid, a grey who won the event in 1989. The following year's running was won by Norton's Coin, whose starting price of 100/1 represents the race's longest ever winning price.

The entire Cheltenham Festival was cancelled in 2001 because of an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease. A replacement for the Cheltenham Gold Cup, the Gold Trophy Chase, was contested at Sandown in late April, but the Racing Post stated that this "lacked any strength in depth and was no substitute for the Gold Cup" [1]. The next three runnings were all won by Best Mate, who is the most recent of the four horses to have won the race three or more times.

In 2009 Kauto Star became the first horse to regain the Gold Cup, overcoming his stablemate and conqueror in 2008, Denman, who had recovered from heart surgery to take his place in the race.[2] Timeform spokesperson Kieran Packman said of Kauto Star's performance, "it is the best Gold Cup-winning figure since the Arkle era in the mid-1960s."[3]