Can Al Boum Photo secure a memorable third successive Gold Cup triumph?

Day four of the 2020 Cheltenham Festival was one of the most memorable days in horse racing’s modern history. A series of dramatic races and finishes, including remarkable triumphs for jockey Paul Townend and trainer Willie Mullins. The most significant of these was victory for Al Boum Photo in the Gold Cup. Trained by Mullins, ridden by Townend, it was a fine performance from jockey and horse alike to claim a second successive win in the Cheltenham Festival showpiece race.

Now, the question on everyone’s lips is whether Al Boum Photo can make it three Gold Cup victories on the spin, with the 2021 Cheltenham Festival looming ever larger on the horizon. A Gold Cup hat-trick is a tantalising prospect for everyone involved with Al Boum Photo, but it’ll be a difficult task given the quality of opposition he’ll be facing.

If you look at the 2021 Cheltenham betting, you’ll see that Al Boum Photo is the current favourite to win the Gold Cup, but with the likes of A Plus Tard, Minella Indo, Santini and Champ also in the running, it’s an incredibly difficult race to call, especially given the close nature of Al Boum Photo’s win last year.

While it was eventually glory for Mullins and Townend in the 2020 Gold Cup, they were really made to sweat in the end, as a neck-and-neck finish between Al Boum Photo and Santini saw the former just nick victory at the line. It was an altogether nervier affair than Al Boum Photo’s maiden Gold Cup win in 2019, where he crossed the line two and a half lengths clear of Anibale Fly.

For jockey Paul Townend, it was the culmination of a great day’s racing, having already ridden two winners beforehand. “This is the stage,” he said, “before this I was having a brilliant day but this is the one, the icing on the cake. The Gold Cup is the Gold Cup and I’ll have to wait a year for another one.”

That wait is now almost over, with the 2021 Festival just a couple of months away. But the intervening period between last year’s Cheltenham Festival and this year has been a strange time for sport. Even during last year’s meeting, the threat of the coronavirus outbreak was plain for all to see, and the subsequent global pandemic has had a major effect on life as we know it, with the sporting world no exception.

The unique circumstances of lockdown and racing without spectators perhaps means this year’s Cheltenham Festival will be even harder to predict. While Al Boum Photo is the favourite to win the Gold Cup again, it would be no surprise to see a winner come entirely out of left-field, given the effect the pandemic will have no doubt had on preparations of the sport’s best horses.

But Mullins is about as experienced a jumps racing trainer as you can get, and there’s no question that he will have Al Boum Photo in the best possible shape to defend his Gold Cup crown. Having emulated Best Mate’s achievement of winning back-to-back Gold Cups, the quest now is to equal the same horse’s record of three successive triumphs.

After all the strangeness of the last 12 months, it would perhaps be a welcome dose of normality to see Al Boum Photo steal across the line in first place in this year’s Cheltenham Gold Cup.

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