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| Kauto Star still lacks mystique of Dessie Jump racing has become a business in the years since the great grey used to thrill usA story seldom told by racing as it frets about declining popularity is that the last seven years have brought a gilded age to National Hunt, with Best Mate winning three Cheltenham Gold Cups and Kauto Star and Denman providing a Muhammad Ali-George Foreman polarity to keep the countryside in rich outdoor theatre.Jump racing challenges its hallowed past to a ratings contest again on Boxing Day when Kauto Star tries to surpass Desert Orchid by winning a fourth consecutive King George VI Chase at Kempton Park, where The Grey Horse's ashes are buried and a headstone marks his contribution to festive drama. A Kauto Star statue is likely to join the one of his silvery predecessor by the paddock.Dessie, as he became known when admiration turned to adoration, also won the King George four times but needed five winters to do so. He was beaten by Nupsala in 1987. Kauto Star leads him by two Gold Cups to one and is on course to win a third, if he can halt the Denman revival at the Festival in March. Desert Orchid's untouchability as the nation's favourite animal since Red Rum is under threat.Beyond the obvious criteria of trophies and Timeform ratings, the cognoscenti are turning their thoughts to aura, to style and to which horse best expresses what jump racing is really all about. Here the camps dig battle lines, because Desert Orchid represents a more Corinthian age when eccentric owner-breeders would chase miracles in covering sheds and send their hulking beasts out over fences to delight other country folk.National Hunt was a faintly dotty society of Evel Knievel riders and trainers who were either rural officer class or farmers with a few quid to waste. This was the world that spawned Desert Orchid, though his main owner, Richard Burridge, was a cool and semi-metropolitan scriptwriter. Kauto Star, on the other hand, is the leading light of a more commercial age in which new-money owners supply the ammunition to a handful of powerful yards and winning is a business as well as a passion.The Desert Orchid fan club stayed open for 17 years until he died in 2006 and raised £40,000 for charity. The horse was a front-running thrill-seeker who used steeplechase fences to display his boldness and agility. He also liked a scrap, as he showed by winning the Gold Cup in filthy conditions. To an outsider this may sound gratingly anthropomorphic. But Desert Orchid was audacious, crowd-conscious and physically committed. His ability to win big handicaps under crushing weights (the Whitbread Gold Cup, the Irish National) puts him one up on Kauto Star.The new idol is a French-bred oil painting, a thing of beauty known as L'Extraterrestre before he joined the all-conquering Paul Nicholls stable in Somerset. Also known as a white-knuckle ride for his tendency (now largely cured) to run through, rather than over, the last fence, Kauto Star would, in human terms, be the dude sipping coffee and exuding magnetism in St-Germain-des-Prés. The first horse to regain the Gold Cup, Kauto Star is best when fresh and is raced selectively, while Desert Orchid attacked all targets and felt more like public property.Traditionalists think this is why the grey one achieved a special connection with the winter game's core audience. Martin Trew, a former senior writer on the Racing Post, says: "His appearances on the racecourse were not presented as a tremendous achievement or a concession on the part of his trainer [David Elsworth]. Racegoers were not made to feel privileged for occasional glimpses bestowed by Team Elsworth. On the contrary he was one of those horses who genuinely loved racing, who thrived on it. Elsworth was always maintaining, without any false modesty that I could detect, that training Desert Orchid was a doddle. He and Burridge were always deflecting credit away from themselves. The public liked that."Nicholls, who trains both Denman and Kauto Star, has hired a marketing specialist, Johnno Spence, to raise his operation's profile. Spence, who also works for the racecourse, says: "From a Kempton perspective we're having Kauto Star merchandise on the day and we need to market it as much as possible. With the non-racing public it's almost a case of educating them about this horse and explaining the story. Using the Desert Orchid comparison is a very good lift, and one of the ways we've sold it into, say, GQ magazine."Cards bearing "4" are to be handed out on Boxing Day and Spence says: "Marketing wise, we have to grab Kauto Star. Sea The Stars came and went before anyone blinked and has retired to stud. There is this huge momentum beyond Boxing Day to Kauto Star and Denman in the Gold Cup next year, which is going to have huge commercial potential for racing."The "fraternity" Spence refers to have been besotted with both horses, naturally, and even Elsworth says: "I can't see why he [the King George favourite] shouldn't be as popular as Dessie." Kauto Star is a champion and a charismatic animal but memory says there was something mystical about Desert Orchid, a silvery beast of legend who almost killed himself in his first race at Kempton, but survived to parade, like Red Rum or Arkle, the true spirit of the racehorse.Kauto StarHorse racingPaul Haywardguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
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