Stunning display from Put The Kettle On and Aidan Coleman earns Champion Chase glory

There are some moments in the Cheltenham Festival each year that demand a horse and jockey to step up and be counted. The final throes of the Queen Mother Champion Chase seemed to be going as expected when Chacun Pour Soi, heavy pre-race favourite in the Cheltenham Festival odds, kicked off from the final fence and began to establish a lead.

But jockey Aidan Coleman and the irrepressible Put The Kettle On simply weren’t having any of it. An explosion of pace drew the mare neck-and-neck with Chacun Pour Soi and the in-form Paul Townend in the saddle, and a few lengths later the hot favourite had been relegated to third. Not even the attention of Nube Negra, pounding up the outside, could stop Put The Kettle On from producing the kind of supreme display that makes the Cheltenham Festival so unique in its drama and emotion.  

“I don’t think anyone has ridden a tougher mare than this,” Coleman beamed in his post-race interview on ITV. “She had some fantastic jumps, and she just threw herself at it, and it’s a testament to her ability. If you could bottle what she has and sell it, I wouldn’t have to ride again – I’d be a rich man.

“When you’re riding a mare like this it’s an extremely good buzz. This year, it’s worked out great for me and I’ve got some great horses. I’m really enjoying riding in these races because I’m riding the right animals. I don’t want to take any plaudits for this because this mare is just something else. Whether she’s the best or not, it doesn’t matter. If you’ve got as much heart as she has, I don’t have to do a lot.”

For many, this Champion Chase will be all about Chacun Pour Soi’s collapse, after the famous incline up the home straight proved too much for the heavily-fancied nine-year-old. But time and again, Cheltenham proves the bookies and punters wrong. Much of the Festival up until the 3.05 on Wednesday, at least in the major races, had gone largely with the odds, but Put The Kettle On’s victory showed that the unpredictability of sport will always get the better of us in the end.

Much of the early stages of the race suggested that Chacun Pour Soi was perfectly poised. Indeed, Coleman and the winning mare started off at the front of the pack, setting the pace while Townend sat neatly in between the leaders. Some will say Townend pushed the panic button and threw caution to the wind too early, that more discipline from the final fence would have stood the Mullins horse in better stead. Nobody reckoned with the blistering pace of Put The Kettle On, and the punters and pundits, who asserted with confidence that this race was finished before it started, were left red-faced.

Trainer Henry De Bromhead certainly wasn’t thinking that way. There had been question marks in some quarters as to whether Put The Kettle On would have been better suited for the Mares’ Chase, but De Bromhead proved his nous, and now he has another memorable Cheltenham memory with the seven-year-old, adding icing to the cake after last year’s sensational victory in the Arkle Challenge Trophy.

Elsewhere in the Cheltenham results today, Townend and Mullins may take consolation from their victory in the Brown Advisory Novices’ Chase with Monkfish. De Bromhead had earlier celebrations too, after Rachael Blackmore continued her fine Festival with victory in the Ballymore Novices’ Hurdle aboard Bob Olinger, while it was an emotional triumph for jockey Richard Condon and Heaven Help Us in the Handicap Hurdle. Even more emotional was Tiger Roll’s success in the Cross Country Chase.

But day two of the 2021 Cheltenham Festival will be remembered for the boldness of Put The Kettle On and jockey Coleman, in taking on the horse that could not lose and handing him defeat in outstanding fashion in the Champion Chase. Moreover, we were handed a reminder that, even in this strange edition of the Cheltenham Festival, where the pounding of hooves echoes across empty stands, that this sport and this meeting still have the power to thrill like no other.