Imperial Commander tears up the Gold Cup's two-horse script

The miracle of this Gold Cup was that two great champions were dethroned and yet it still felt like a day of wonder for National Hunt racing. Ruby Walsh rode the fallen odds-on favourite, Kauto Star, back to the unsaddling enclosure from the scene of their tumble upright in the saddle, like a defiant cavalry officer, and Denman reached into his deepest store of energy to finish runner-up to Imperial Commander, who was cheered by an exultant crowd despite spoiling the romantic two‑horse script. The Festival rose a level with Imperial Commander's seven-length victory at 7-1. So relentlessly dramatic was this 3¼-mile trial of the spirit that tens of thousands of spectators became part of the contest out on the track. Cheltenham crowds are often giddy and always appreciative but nobody could remember them being so consumed by the action with every jump. They gasped as Denman soared over fences and howled when Kauto Star crashed through the eighth and knocked the light out of himself before coming down four fences out. In other sports Imperial Commander would have been greeted as an impostor who had ruined the decider between the winners of the last three Gold Cups. Instead there was a realisation that jump racing had erred by turning this occasion into a private duel between the two Paul Nicholls-trained big shots. In the build-up the rest of the field had assumed the role of bit-part players. Imperial Commander was not the only contender to interject. Third home was last year's Grand National winner, Mon Mome, who rated barely a mention in the preamble. Plenty of shrewd punters were immune to this ballyhoo. As Imperial Commander passed the line under Paddy Brennan, damp copies of the Racing Post were tossed and hats flew like Frisbees. Some had noticed that the winner had been beaten by only a nose by Kauto Star in the Betfair Chase in November and was decent value at 7-1. There is the theatre out on the track and then there is the betting, in which most punters were wiped out over the four days. If hope could take human form, it would have been driven away from the Cotswolds in an ambulance. The defeats of Master Minded in Wednesday's Queen Mother Champion Chase and Kauto Star and Denman were the biggest triumphs for bookmakers in a week when gamblers squealed for mercy. So this was not a two-creature pageant but a test for the best of the National Hunt breed. For seven fences it was a masterclass of steeplechasing. But then Kauto Star exhibited the first signs of mental frailty since the bad old days when he would try to walk straight through fences late in races. Just as Walsh was doubtless starting to sniff his third Gold Cup win on Desert Orchid's successor as the nation's official horse, Kauto Star turned him into a rodeo rider, belting the top of the fence and almost jolting Ireland's champion out of the plate. L'Extraterrestrial , as he was known in France, ploughed on but his confidence had evaporated. Denman, the darling of traditionalists, took up the stable's cause, jumping audaciously and barrelling into open country. The audience was entranced. Four fences out Kauto Star self-detonated, stepping in to the foot of the obstacle and sending himself over the birch in a somersaulting heap. As Walsh landed like a fly-half diving in for a try, he turned straightaway to check his partner was unharmed. Later, as Imperial Commander took the ovation, Walsh could be seen standing up in the saddle as Kauto Star's white noseband approached through the gloom. This was how to come home vanquished: upright, proud. Kauto Star cantered back to the exit chute "as fresh as a daisy" in Walsh's plucky phrase. He was hardly that. But National Hunt racing folk do not make a tragedy out of a setback. Kauto Star had passed from invincibility to fallibility inside 10 minutes. His romping wins in last year's Gold Cup and December's King George VI Chase seemed an age ago. Like boxers steeplechasers never warn you the end is nigh. It was not the mistake at the eighth fence that pointed to his mortality so much as his inability to recover from it. Denman, who could be trained for next year's Grand National, was transcending doubt and showing himself to be a great equine warrior from the old school. To achieve immortality here a horse needs more than one Gold Cup victory (he crushed Kauto Star to win two years ago) yet Denman has twice distinguished himself in defeat. This course jolts him back to life. His acolytes would say it is because he was bred for days like these. The heavy, saturnine mood that seems to afflict him at the Nicholls yard lifts and he attacks the Prestbury fences with joie de vivre. "That Denman, he never goes away, does he?" Brennan said. Under Tony McCoy he was asked to make the final assault swinging for home but the sprightly, super-fit Imperial Commander was skipping along with him and accelerated up the hill to register a distinctly local triumph. Motor to a Cotswolds village called Guiting Power 12 miles away and you will find a pub called the Hollow Bottom, which feels like an extension of Cheltenham racecourse. It is also a shrine to Nigel Twiston-Davies, Imperial Commander's trainer, who has a share in the business and who said as he approached the winner's enclosure here: "This was a home win. We are where we belong." Half an hour later Twiston-Davies's 18-year-old son Sam won the Foxhunter Chase on the stable's Baby Run, then their Pigeon Island took the last under Brennan. All leave would have been cancelled at the Hollow Bottom. "Paul Nicholls has done a wonderful job with his two horses but we need new ones coming through and ours is the best now," Twiston-Davies senior said of his champion. "I loved all the Kauto Star-Denman thing but I always thought we could beat them." From a theoretically anticlimactic day the Racing For Change initiative had the perfect promotional DVD. This beat media training, decimal odds, simpler racecourse announcements and all the other ploys to get people to the track. It was the action speaking for itself. It was the purest sport.