Cheltenham Festival Greats: Remembering Dawn Run
Next in our series highlighting the achievements of Cheltenham greats, John Ingles focuses on the remarkable Dawn Run.
The double of all doubles
There aren’t many horses who can claim a truly unique record in the history of jump racing but Dawn Run really was a one-off.
No other horse before or since has managed to win both the Champion Hurdle and the Cheltenham Gold Cup, and it’s all the more remarkable that the only winner of the two most prestigious prizes over hurdles and fences should be a mare. After all, only one other mare had ever won the Champion Hurdle before Dawn Run, and only three had previously won the Gold Cup.
That’s how Dawn Run will be best remembered, though there were plenty of other remarkable aspects to Dawn Run’s career. For example, the very first win of her career, in a bumper at Tralee in June 1981, was gained with her 62-year-old owner Mrs Charmian Hill in the saddle.
Dawn Run would go on to win another twenty races in her career, five of those victories coming in her first campaign over hurdles. She made her Cheltenham debut that season as an 11/1 shot in the Sun Alliance Hurdle for which fellow Irish novices Ballinacurra Lad and Stag Hill headed the market in a huge field of 27.
But with former champion Ron Barry in the saddle, replacing her trainer’s son Tony Mullins who had ridden Dawn Run in most of her races over hurdles in Ireland (Mrs Hill felt the twenty-one year old was too inexperienced for the mare’s biggest test to date), Dawn Run fared much the best of the Irish, jumping well in the lead and keeping on stoutly when headed by the eventual three-length winner, the Michael Dickinson-trained four-year-old Sabin du Loir, at the second last. Dawn Run’s Irish form held up well at Cheltenham as the Supreme Novices’ Hurdle went to Buck House whom she’d beaten at Leopardstown earlier in the season.
Aintree attempt narrowly thwarted
Good as Dawn Run’s Cheltenham effort was, it was Aintree three weeks later that revealed her to be the season’s best novice hurdler. With Mullins back in the saddle she was turned out two days running at Aintree, galloping her rivals into the ground under top weight in a handicap on the Friday and then taking on the Champion Hurdle winner Gaye Brief in the Templegate Hurdle on Grand National day.
Sent off at 12/1 in a field of six, Dawn Run set out to make all again and it was only between the last two flights that Gaye Brief challenged her. Even when headed, Dawn Run fought back so well that she went down by just a length in receipt of 6 lb from her top-class rival. There was a break of twenty lengths to the third For Auction, winner of the previous season’s Champion Hurdle and third in the latest edition.
Dawn Run had been scheduled to go over fences the following season but the way she ended her novice hurdle campaign (she went on to win the Champion Novice Hurdle at Punchestown after Aintree) prompted connections to keep her over hurdles for the time being. Her Timeform rating of 168 was exceptional for a novice, particularly for a mare.
O’Neill takes the reins
By the time she returned to Cheltenham for the 1984 Festival, Dawn Run had won another four hurdles and was sent off the 4/5 favourite for the Champion Hurdle in receipt of the 5 lb allowance which mares had been given in Britain for the first time that season. She also had a new regular jockey by now, with Jonjo O’Neill replacing Mullins.
The reigning champion Gaye Brief looked the one Dawn Run had to beat again if she was to win the Champion Hurdle. He was himself odds on to retain his title until torn back ligaments ruled him out of his defence just a week before the race. In any case, Dawn Run had avenged her Aintree defeat to Gaye Brief in the Christmas Hurdle, refusing to give way and coming out on top by a neck in a thrilling battle despite the test of speed over Kempton’s flat two miles being widely expected to favour Gaye Brief beforehand.
With Gaye Brief out of the Champion Hurdle picture, Dawn Run’s chief rival was now reckoned to be the five-year-old novice Desert Orchid – later to win the Gold Cup himself, of course - whose only defeat in seven starts that season prior to Cheltenham had come over further than two miles. But Desert Orchid didn’t give his true running in the Champion Hurdle, Dawn Run regaining her lead coming down the hill after Desert Orchid, a front runner himself, had managed to head her briefly in the back straight. Dawn Run’s new challenger was old rival Buck House, but she shook him off rounding the home turn and, despite landing flat-footed over the last, responded well to hold off the 66/1 outsider Cima by three quarters of a length.
Led into the winner’s enclosure by her owner, Dawn Run was soon mobbed by a crowd of well-wishers ‘amid some of the most jubilant scenes we can recall at Festival meeting’ as Chasers & Hurdlers described them, with Mrs Hill, wearing a red coat with a black belt – her racing colours – being lifted shoulder high in the celebrations.
Mullins back in the plate for Merseyside magic
Winning the Champion Hurdle was the highlight of Dawn Run’s season but much more impressive was her subsequent victory in the Aintree Hurdle (Mullins back on board replacing the injured O’Neill) where she routed her field in breathtaking fashion after quickly establishing a long lead. The Champion Hurdle third Very Promising struggled on to finish ten lengths behind her in second, while Cima was beaten out of sight this time, along with Buck House again.
In all, Dawn Run won eight of her nine starts in the 1983/84 season, earning a hurdles rating of 173 which makes her the highest-rated mare over jumps in Timeform’s experience. It almost goes without saying that she proved herself supremely tough in an exacting campaign, but versatile too, winning on ground ranging from firm to heavy and over distances from two miles to beyond three – her final win of the season came in the Grande Course de Haies d’Auteuil, the so-called ‘French Champion Hurdle’.
That completed a unique hat-trick of ‘champion hurdles’ as she had also won the Irish version, conceding weight all round – the mares’ allowance didn’t yet apply in Ireland. ‘Her triumphant progress through the season’s top races warmed the heart of every lover of National Hunt racing’ said Chasers & Hurdlers who made her their Champion Jumper.
Larger obstacles no barrier to success
It was now time for the big, rangy Dawn Run, a chaser on both looks and pedigree, to go over fences but it was to be another two years before her next appearance at the Festival. She duly won easily on her chasing debut at Navan the following November but a set-back caused her to miss the rest of the season. In her absence, the Arkle was won by Boreen Prince, runner-up to Dawn Run in the previous season’s Irish Champion Hurdle, from Buck House who’d finished twenty lengths behind Dawn Run in their latest clash at Navan.
Dawn Run was therefore exceedingly short on chasing experience when she took her chance in the 1986 Cheltenham Gold Cup. She managed only three more starts over fences since returning to action after her setback and put in a clear round in only two of them.
Only two other Gold Cup winners had won the race after just four starts over fences. Having won both her starts in Ireland on her return from injury, Dawn Run was given a sighter of Cheltenham’s chase course in the race that’s now the Cotswold Chase at the end of January but whilst leading her rivals a merry dance she made a mistake at the last ditch six out and unseated Mullins who remounted to finish a remote last of four.
Mullins had kept the ride on Dawn Run on all her starts over fences until now but once again had to make way for O’Neill in the Gold Cup for which Dawn Run started the 15/8 favourite in the absence of the outstanding 1984 Gold Cup winner Burrough Hill Lad who had to miss the race for the second year running through injury.
That still left Dawn Run with the first three from the previous season’s Gold Cup to beat – Forgive ‘N Forget, Righthand Man and Earls Brig - plus the first two from the latest King George, Wayward Lad and Combs Ditch, along with the Welsh National winner Run And Skip.
In what proved an epic Gold Cup, the last-named fought a tremendous duel with Dawn Run for most of the race, contributing to the course record being broken on the good to firm ground. The lead changed hands between them a few times, with a bold leap from Dawn Run briefly putting her back in front two out before Forgive N’ Forget and Wayward Lad were produced with their challenges going to the last.
Dawn Run looked held in third at that point but staged a tremendous rally up the hill to pass the tiring Wayward Lad in the shadow of the post to win by a length with Forgive N’ Forget third and Run And Skip fourth.
Celebrations on another level
Once again, bedlam broke out in the aftermath of the Gold Cup just as it had done after the Champion Hurdle two years earlier, this time Jonjo O’Neill sportingly hoisting Tony Mullins onto his shoulders to share in the celebrations in the winner’s enclosure.
O’Neill was injured and Mullins was back in the saddle when Dawn Run was successful for the final time in her career, as it turned out, in a specially arranged match at Punchestown with Buck House who’d won the Queen Mother Champion Chase. Like their six other meetings it went Dawn Run’s way.
Dawn Run’s place among the Cheltenham Greats was therefore assured but after the highs of completing her Champion Hurdle-Gold Cup double her story had a tragic ending soon afterwards when she fell fatally in her attempt to win her second Grande Course de Haies.
There was therefore no legacy for Dawn Run to pass on via any offspring at stud. But her Champion Hurdle victory has paved the way for another four mares win to win the race since, including Honeysuckle last year. Another mare to win it was Annie Power in 2016, the highest-rated hurdler of her sex since Dawn Run and trained by Willie Mullins, son of Dawn Run’s trainer Paddy Mullins.
It's no doubt due to the exploits of Dawn Run for his father that mares have played such a large part in Willie Mullins’ own success in his training career. He has dominated all three of the mares’ races that now form part of the Cheltenham Festival programme, including the novice hurdle which bears Dawn Run’s name.