Cheltenham Gold Cup was responsible for all of the first five horses to finish – Bregawn, Captain John, Wayward Lad, Silver Buck and Ashley House. The 1986 winner, Dawn Run, is the only horse to have ever won both this race and the leading hurdle event, the Champion Hurdle. One of the most popular horses to win the Gold Cup was Desert Orchid, a grey who won the event in 1989. The following year's running was won by Norton's Coin, whose starting price of 100/1 represents the race's longest ever winning price. The entire Cheltenham Festival was cancelled in 2001 because of an
The Great Match (horse race) The Great Match (horse race) The Great Match is the name given to a match race between two of the most famous British thoroughbred racehorses of the 19th Century - Voltigeur and The Flying Dutchman. The race took place at York on 31 May 1851 for a purse of 1,000 sovereigns. The Flying Dutchman was a five-year-old, who had won the 1849 Epsom Derby and St Leger and, as a four-year-old, the 1850 Ascot Gold Cup. So dominant had he been that the whip had only been raised on him once, during his Derby victory. Voltigeur was a year younger,