Baracouda

World Hurdle, Cheltenham

All Time Great Lays

Baracouda was almost invincible in long distance hurdle races during the early 2000s. JP McManus's gelding raced 15 times between November 2000 and February 2004, and he lost just once. That was in the Long Walk Hurdle at Ascot in December 2002 when he was ridden way out of his ground against the talented if somewhat enigmatic Deano's Beano, and got beaten by just a length. As such, the defeat was wholly forgivable.

However, chinks began to appear in the French gelding’s armoury in the 2004 World Hurdle at Cheltenham when, sent off the 8-11 favourite, he was beaten by Iris’s Gift, two years his junior, comprehensively if relatively narrowly. It was the same Iris’s Gift that Baracouda had beaten in the same race the previous year, but back then Baracouda was eight and Iris’s Gift was six, one was in his prime as a staying hurdler, the other hadn’t yet reached his. At nine and seven, however, different story.

Undaunted, Doumen prepared Baracouda for a bid to regain his crown in 2005, and he warmed up for it by winning both the Long Distance Hurdle at Newbury and the Long Walk Hurdle, re-routed to Windsor. However, both of those races were unsatisfactory as contests. In the former, they went no early gallop and Baracouda scrambled home by three parts of a length from Crystal D’Ainay, in the latter they sprinted from the second last flight, and two lengths covered the first four home.

Nevertheless, there was no Iris’s Gift in the World Hurdle line-up in 2005 and, as a result, they put Baracouda in as the 6-5 favourite. However, that was without taking cognisance of an overwhelming age stat that the staying stalwart had to overcome. Although the World Hurdle is essentially a stayers’ contest, it is rare that the winner is not endowed with a degree of speed as well. Baracouda himself had the speed to beat Hors La Loi III in the Ascot Hurdle over two and a half miles three months before that rival went and won the Champion Hurdle ? but that had been in November 2001, more than three years before the 2005 World Hurdle.

In 2005, Baracouda was 10 years old, his turn of foot almost certainly blunted with age. It was not a coincidence that you had to go back to Galmoy in 1988 to find the last horse aged older than eight to have won the World Hurdle. Even Baracouda himself had failed as a nine-year-old the previous year.

While the old stager did manage to beat Rule Supreme and Westender and Crystal D’Ainay and Emotional Moment in the 2005 World Hurdle, he simply couldn’t cope with the turn of foot that new kid on the block Inglis Drever was able to deliver from the final flight, and he finished second, three lengths behind the impressive winner.

Baracouda ran twice after that, finishing second again to Inglis Drever in the Long Distance Hurdle at Newbury the following November, and returning for another crack at the World Hurdle the following March, when he could finish no better than an honourable fifth behind My Way De Solzen.