BY ALASTAIR DOWN 4:38PM 1 JUL 2015 OUT OF a cloudless blue sky on a searing summer’s day news breaks that injects a touch of winter chill to the heart. The incomparable Kauto Star is dead – gone is the paragon. In the scheme of a wider world riven by tragedies and vile confrontation, a fatal injury to a 15-year-old gelding in a field is of little consequence – the stuff of footnotes. But in our village, bound together by a love of the racehorse and intoxication with the wonders they can weave, the pang of sadness is inescapable. Kauto Star lived well and it will be at Ditcheat where there will be genuine desolation. Paul Nicholls, Clifford Baker and the team had great chunks of their life defined by the fact that every morning when they walked into the yard they were in the presence of greatness. For eight seasons that white face peered out from his box, not just lord of all he surveyed but ruler of the jumping world. And next door was everyone’s favourite nightclub bouncer, the fabulous Denman, who regularly battled for mastery with his neighbour and whose Gold Cup record reads 1222. Stable boxes are not usually places of reverence, but the few square yards that were home to Kauto Star and Denman were the lair of legends. Kauto Star is deservedly described as the “finest chaser since Arkle”, but that title fails to grasp how important he was to a whole generation of racegoers to whom Arkle was a misty figure from a black-and-white world. What Kauto Star did was to educate every racing fan under 60 as to what true brilliance in a steeplechaser actually looks like. And as he scaled his peaks – the Gold Cup won in 2007 and, uniquely, regained in 2009 – we all travelled the road with him and to those of the post-Arkle era he was riveting, compelling and captivating because current racegoers had literally not seen the likes of him before. He unlocked the door to true magnificence and allowed us all in. And as he merrily racked up rewrites of history – including his scarcely credible five King George victories – the bond between horse and public moved through affection and admiration into that very rarely conquered zone of love flecked with awe. please log in to view this image Class in Britain is normally a matter of conflict. With Kauto Star it was something to celebrate and wallow in because he was lifting us ever upward into the uncharted stratosphere. And he wasn’t infallible, which gave watching him an added frisson of risk and that ever-present tug of unease with which the jumps lover has to live. In his early days he could throw in random blunders that would rattle the stands, although Ruby Walsh got wise to the fact that when there was a sudden injection of pace was also the time when he was inclined to clout one. He fell in the Champion Chase and Gold Cup. He won just two of his seven races at Cheltenham, but they were the ones that mattered. It is a curiosity with horses of epochal significance that they pass from being the property of one man and into some form of public ownership whereby we get all the fun but none of the bills. And of course everyone will have their own special Kauto Star memory – a private gem from the treasure house of his achievements. Two stand out for me and the first was a very thorough defeat. The afternoon Denman beat Kauto Star seven lengths in the Gold Cup was a bad one for the favourite and his loyal legions. His jumping was scrappy, even the peerless Ruby couldn’t get him into a rhythm, and he was never going to reel in the brute force of nature bounding along up front. But he never gave up and by the latter stages of what is always a savagely harsh race when he must have been running on a mix of instinct and hard-rasped air, he tried every yard up that dreaded hill. It was the afternoon he proved his class was underpinned by the bedrock of courage. However, bang up there with his finest hours was his Betfair Chase victory in November 2011. Written off by many as being a light of former days after being pulled up at Punchestown in May, there were plenty calling for him to be retired – the brave ones publicly and the spineless types muttering from behind their hands. please log in to view this image But that indelible afternoon at Haydock was where he soared once more. Jumping exuberantly in front he brought the crowd to delirious life as he stormed up the straight and returned to a humdinger of a reception with a moist eye or two among the endless hordes, and Paul Nicholls almost in orbit with the ecstasy of the moment. A benchmark , God-is-in-his-heaven and all’s right with the jumping world occasion. And part of the joy was that we had Kauto Star back and at his best, nagging fears that the crown was lying uneasy on his head blown away by the sheer bravura of the performance. That the old boy became the source of such a vitriolic dispute when he was retired was regrettable, but human failings cannot be laid at his door. Kauto Star gave us a modern golden age. A horse not from flickering newsreel but part of the internet era, a modern champion served brilliantly by those who looked after him at home, putting the graft into him as he made his way to the pinnacle of the pyramid. Don’t mourn his passing as there was nothing remotely sad about him in his wondrous pomp. He gave us the priceless winter gifts of raw excitement, stirred emotion and that restorative feeling you get when you and thousands of others have been involved root, branch, heart and soul in the very stuff of jump race immortality. Celebrate Kauto Star and what he gave to us all. Raise a glass to his name and reflect of how lucky we all were to have him gallop through our lives. Kauto Star: March 19, 2000 - June 29, 2015. Hail and farewell. And, most of all, thank you.
