Cheltenham Festival Greats: Remembering four-time Stayers' Hurdle winner Big Buck's

The first decade of the current century proved an important one for raising the status of the Stayers’ Hurdle.

Formerly run as the main supporting race on Gold Cup day, it became the feature contest on the Thursday of the Festival when the meeting was expanded to four days in 2005. With it came a substantial increase in prize money under new sponsors Ladbrokes, as well as a less functional but also less appropriate change of name to the World Hurdle for the duration of the sponsorship through to 2015.

The first ‘World’ Hurdle was won by Inglis Drever who denied French rival Baracouda what would have been a record third win in the race after his successes in 2002 and 2003. Absent a year later, Inglis Drever nonetheless returned successfully in both 2007 and 2008 to become the first triple winner of the Stayers’/World Hurdle. But that claim to fame was to be short-lived.

Next in the series of top-class staying hurdlers was Big Buck’s who would go on to win the next four editions of the World Hurdle. Big Buck’s established the longest reign by a top staying hurdler and his unbeaten sequence of 18 victories set a new record for a jumper until it was surpassed by Altior, another Cheltenham Great whose career was covered here last week.

Big Buck’s became so synonymous with the World Hurdle that it’s easy to forget now that he made his Festival debut over fences. Carrying top weight, he finished a creditable seventh in the Jewson Novices’ Handicap Chase which is now no longer part of the Festival programme. The two and a half mile trip was the longest distance Big Buck’s had tackled until then and he got to prove his staying capabilities on his next start when stepped up to beyond three miles for the Mildmay Novices’ Chase at Aintree.

His third win of the season over fences put five-year-old Big Buck’s up with the season’s best novice chasers despite the fact that, although tall and leggy and very much a chaser on looks, he wasn’t a natural jumper of fences as his trainer Paul Nicholls freely admitted. Big Buck’s got away with mistakes at both Cheltenham and Aintree but a last-fence blunder and unseat when likely to have finished a close third in the Hennessy Gold Cup at Newbury the following autumn changed the whole course of his career.

On the same card Inglis Drever sustained what proved a career-ending injury which now put his stayers’ crown up for grabs.

By the time Big Buck’s returned to the Festival to contest his first World Hurdle, his winning sequence over the smaller obstacles was already under way with two wins over the same course and distance. He beat future Grand National winner Don’t Push It, conceding him more than a stone, in a handicap on New Year’s Day and later in January followed up, in receipt of 8 lb from odds-on favourite Punchestowns, winner of the Long Walk, in the Cleeve Hurdle.

The same pair took the first two places in the World Hurdle, this time Big Buck’s requiring a top-class effort to get the better of Punchestowns at level weights, the pair pulling a long way clear and having the odds-on Kasbah Bliss, from the Baracouda stable of Francois Doumen, back in fourth. Despite landing awkwardly when challenging at the final flight and then idling a little on the run-in, Big Buck’s ran out the winner by a length and three quarters.

Big Buck’s was 6/1 for his first World Hurdle but was sent off at odds on for the remainder of his winning streak. Returning to defend his World Hurdle title in 2010, he had also won the Liverpool Hurdle, Long Distance Hurdle and Long Walk Hurdle in the meantime without ever looking in much danger of being beaten.

With less pace than anticipated, Big Buck’s could have been forgiven for hitting what some had identified in earlier races as his ‘flat spot’ when the pace increased but there was no sign of that as, patiently ridden as ever under Ruby Walsh, Big Buck’s oozed class in beating Time For Rupert by three and a quarter lengths. Among those further back, incidentally, were both a former Champion Hurdle winner, Katchit, and a former Gold Cup winner War of Attrition.

Big Buck’s took his sequence to eleven straight wins when winning his third World Hurdle, one more than the winning streaks established by those other top hurdlers Lanzarote, Night Nurse, Istabraq and Baracouda. Walsh was back in the saddle at Cheltenham after injury earlier in the season when Tony McCoy had deputised for him in the Long Distance Hurdle and the Long Walk which, for the second year running, had to be run at Newbury instead of Ascot.

Whilst equalling Inglis Drever’s total of three wins, he was the first horse to win the staying hurdlers’ championship three years running. Baracouda’s failed bid to do so has already been mentioned, and he’d been denied an earlier opportunity to win the Stayers’ when the 2001 Festival fell victim to foot and mouth; Baracouda won the substitute race run at Sandown instead.

Irish gelding Galmoy was runner-up when bidding for a third consecutive Stayers’ Hurdle win in 1989. Crimson Embers was the first horse to win the race twice – four years apart in 1982 and 1986 – though was unlucky not to be awarded the 1985 edition as well when the stewards allowed Rose Ravine, in the same ownership, to keep the race despite carrying Crimson Embers across the track.

Once again, Big Buck’s coped with a race that wasn’t a true test of stamina, the pace a farcical one which resulted in the first nine finishers being covered by less than ten lengths at the finish. Despite Walsh dropping his whip on the run-in and his mount idling markedly, Big Buck’s got the better of a thrilling finish with second favourite Grands Crus who had emerged as his chief threat when winning the Cleeve Hurdle on his previous start.

There was a length and three quarters between them at the line, though the bare form didn’t truly reflect their superiority over the rest.

A year later, and the 2012 World Hurdle proved to be the last of four wins in the race for Big Buck’s but there was no sign yet of his powers fading. Quite the opposite, in fact. He had one more race than in the two previous campaigns, contesting the Cleeve Hurdle as he had done three years earlier.

Away from the World Hurdle, his four other wins that season were each gained by between five and nine lengths suggesting his grip on the staying hurdling division was as tight as ever and, for the second season running, his Timeform rating was as high as it had ever been at 176+. Not that he had to run to that figure very often – his superiority was such that it was rare that he had to run up to his best.

The field for the 2012 World Hurdle was slightly smaller than the three previous years, with a couple of new rivals, Oscar Whisky and Thousand Stars, the closest pair to Big Buck’s in the betting. However, neither saw out the trip and instead it was the Irish mare Voler La Vedette who gave Big Buck’s most to do.

In a more truly-run race than the two previous editions, Walsh sent Big Buck’s on turning down the hill after three out and, despite wandering in the closing stages, he gamely repelled the mare’s challenge to win by a length and three quarters, the same margin as in both 2009 and 2011.

As well as taking his career earnings past the million pound mark, the 2012 World Hurdle was a significant milestone in his winning sequence – win number 16 for Big Buck’s equaled the previous record of consecutive victories over jumps which had been set by another French-bred hurdler, Sir Ken, generally acknowledged to be the finest hurdler of the era just after World War II.

He too gained his sixteenth successive win at Cheltenham in March, when winning his second Champion Hurdle in 1953, and while he was beaten on his next start the following season, he went on to win a third Champion Hurdle and later won for the fourth time at the Festival when successful in the Cotswold Chase (nowadays the Arkle).

It looked like it would be business as usual when Big Buck’s cruised home in front on his reappearance at Newbury the following season to win his fourth Long Distance Hurdle. Having passed Sir Ken’s record at Aintree in the spring, that extended his sequence of wins to 18.

But some heat was detected in one of his forelegs not long afterwards, prompting Nicholls to announce that Big Buck’s would miss the remainder of the season. In his absence, the 2013 World Hurdle went to the Irish-trained Solwhit who beat Celestial Halo, owned, like Big Buck’s, by Andy Stewart.

Although said to be only minor tendon damage, the injury to Big Buck’s effectively ended his lengthy reign as the best staying hurdler around. He did make it back for one more World Hurdle but his winning streak had been broken by then. Having just turned eleven, he made his return from more than a year off in the Cleeve Hurdle, sent off the 6/5 favourite, but ran some way below his best in finishing third to another eleven-year-old, the 66/1-shot Knockara Beau.

The 2014 World Hurdle confirmed a changing of the guard in the staying division with the youngest pair in the field, six-year-olds More of That and Annie Power, both defending unbeaten records, fighting out the finish with Big Buck’s only fifth.

The decision was taken to retire Big Buck’s there and then after the World Hurdle and he returned to the parade ring for a lap of honour and a rousing send-off. Besides his four World Hurdles and two Cleeves at Cheltenham, Big Buck’s also won the Liverpool Hurdle and Long Distance Hurdle four times each and the Long Walk three times.

As well as being Timeform’s ‘best staying hurdler’ five seasons in a row, Big Buck’s was named Timeform Horse of the Year for 2011/12. ‘He was a most genuine racehorse’ concluded the last of his seven essays in Chasers & Hurdlers, ‘whose phenomenal achievements have rightly earned him a place among the hurdling greats.’

Cheltenham Greats: Altior

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