A week of sorrow and spectacle awaits

It's difficult to describe the mood on Tuesday morning at the Cheltenham Festival. There is really nothing else like it in sport. The air is thick with fresh stout, damp tweed and an unshakeable certainty from every man and woman who claims to know which horses are working well at home. The hallowed ground almost trembles under the weight of expectation, as time ticks closer to the Supreme Novices’ Hurdle and the primal roar that greets the field as they head off on their way.

Yet, for all its customary giddiness, there will be a note of solemnity in the revelry this afternoon in the Cotswolds. Cheltenham has always been a place where great horsemen and women are immortalised, but seldom in the circumstances that have befallen the racing community in recent times. The untimely passing of Michael O’Sullivan last month has cast a shadow over this year’s meeting, dulling the edges of that opening day excitement. Racing, as a sport, has always walked hand in hand with tragedy, yet there remains something profoundly jarring about the absence of a young man who, just two years ago, set this very stage alight with a ride that left everyone convinced that he would dominate the Festival for the next two decades.

It was in that first race of the week that O’Sullivan and Marine Nationale excelled, surging up the famous hill with a swagger that suggested they had been following a script. It was the kind of performance that instantly elevated its architect to something more than just another youngster in the weighing room. The Cheltenham crowd had been immediately seduced. A star had been born.

That Tuesday afternoon belonged to him. And now, on first day of the Festival two years later, his name will be spoken in hushed tones, not with the giddy expectation of what might come next. The din of Cheltenham will not abate – and racing will continue – but in the midst of it all, his absence will be keenly felt.

The young Cork jockey should be walking into the weighing room this morning, nodding at familiar faces, sharing a quiet word with trainers, maybe flashing that same unassuming smile at television cameras that masked a steeliness beneath. Instead, his absence looms over Prestbury Park like dark clouds waiting to burst open.

His death last month was a gut-wrenching reminder that even in a sport where risk is stitched into the fabric, some tragedies feel impossible to comprehend. The news rippled through racing, leaving behind stunned silence at a time of the year when racing folk can't stop talking about their sport. Late February is when the racing community comes to life.

This afternoon, the Supreme Novices’ Hurdle, the race that set his career into orbit, will bear his name. It is a fitting tribute, albeit a painful one. No doubt the tributes will continue throughout the week, but Cheltenham is not a place that stands still. The races will go ahead, the roar will rise, and talk of a lost talent will weave itself into the same conversations that herald the next great stars.

For all the sorrow that lingers over this year's Festival, the parade ring will still be a cauldron of nerves and excitement. The greatest show on turf must go on.

Amid it all, there is history waiting to be written. Willie Mullins once again travels across the Irish Sea with a battalion that would have made Napoleon seem under-resourced. And leading the stable is Galopin Des Champs, a horse on the verge of a historic achievement. A third Gold Cup would elevate him into the rare company. Only four horses have achieved the three-peat of racing’s blue riband – Golden Millar, Cottage Rake, Arkle and Best Mate. Galopin Des Champs is primed to enter the esteemed club this Friday afternoon.

A third Gold Cup is a threshold that straddles greatness and immortality. It's a race that punishes arrogance, exposes frailty, and rarely forgives mistakes. It takes a horse of unique brilliance to win it twice. Winning it three times requires a combination of traits that come along only once in a generation.

Despite winning all before them thus far in their respective careers, a win for the favourite on Friday would be a career-defining moment for both Mullins and Paul Townend.

As Ruby Walsh eloquently put it last week: "Henry Cecil had Frankel, and any champion in any sport wants that legacy. In racing, champions want to have a legacy horse, and he could be Paul Townend’s and Willie Mullins’. He is the one who could crown it all.” The race must nevertheless still be ran. And though it is a race that has a way of exposing the fragile and exalting the exceptional, Galopin Des Champs left no doubt about which category he belonged to in last year's renewal.

He travelled with menace, sat patiently while others stretched themselves thin, and when the moment came, he devoured the climb to the line as if he had just been let out of his box. It was a statement win, the kind that made clear that this was the best staying chaser of his generation.

Of course, his air of invincibility has faded from time to time, particularly at Punchestown. But he always seems to reserve his best form for the Festival. Perhaps the lush grass of the Cotswolds just suits his palate.

And in truth, this year’s field lacks a true rival capable of threatening the champion. There is no Denman to bully him, no Kauto Star to outclass him, no Native River to drag him into deep waters if there's a downpour on the day. If Galopin Des Champs remains the same horse that produced a masterclass twelve months ago, and again at the Dublin Racing Festival a few weeks ago, history will be unable to deny him another win in the race that matters most.

O’Sullivan may have been taken too soon, but his legacy as one of the great young talents of the sport is already secure. His name will forever be tied to Cheltenham, and to that Tuesday afternoon when he announced himself to the world. Now, as this week unfolds, it is Galopin Des Champs who stands on the brink of cementing a legacy. The Supreme Novices’ Hurdle will always belong to O’Sullivan. As for the modern Gold Cup, that is still there for the taking.