Tiger Roll
THE 2022 Cheltenham Festival delivered more drama than the Oscars. Rachael Blackmore was “absolutely lost for words” when she became the first woman to win the Gold Cup with a note-perfect ride on A Plus Tard and was greeted with rapturous applause. Jack Kennedy rode a fearsome race on Delta Work to win the Glenfarclas Cross Country Chase on an almost waterlogged course and was met with thunderous boos.
The reason? He’d chased beloved Tiger Roll and Davy Russell into second place and denied what would have been, in Irish trainer Gordon Elliott’s words, “the perfect ending”.
The owners, the O’Learys’ Gigginstown House Stud, had already announced that Tiger would retire and live with Michael and his family as his “fifth child” after this race. Davy was surprised by the crowd’s reaction and says, “I’ve never heard it before. I can understand where people were coming from, but it seemed to be in jest, it didn’t feel like there was any malice in it.”
The emotion Tiger inspires
