John Durkan Memorial Chase: Celebrating Five Iconic Winners It’s an exciting time of year for Jump racing fans and we get to see more and more superstars making their seasonal debuts. The Grade 1 John Durkan Memorial Punchestown Chase is set to take place on Sunday and there are some fascinating entries for it. Established in 1968, the race was renamed in honour of the late John Durkan in 1998. We’re going to take a look back at past years and we’ve selected five legendary horses who have their names etched into the trophy. Dawn Run makes the list and the most recent entry is Willie Mullins’ star, Galopin Des Champs. Dawn Run (1985) Winning the Champion Hurdle/Gold Cup double is a historic achievement and Dawn Run is the only horse to have ever done it. Added to that, she was the second mare ever to win the Champion Hurdle and one of four mares to have won the Gold Cup. What an absolutely phenomenal racehorse she turned out to be! The Paddy Mullins-trained mare won this race in 1985, en route to Gold Cup glory the following March. Her rivals were no match on the day and she won by a comfortable margin of eight lengths. Florida Pearl (2001) You have to have some career in order to get a race named after you and Willie Mullins’ Florida Pearl certainly did. The two-time Cheltenham Festival winner won the Hennessy Gold Cup four times, with the last of those successes coming at the age of 12. He won this race in 2001, before going on to claim the King George at Kempton. It was an almighty tussle between Florida Pearl and the previous year’s winner, Native Upmanship, with the latter closing with every stride, but Mullins’ gelding managed to cling on. Beef Or Salmon (2003) Michael Hourigan’s stable star was one of the most popular Irish chasers in the early 2000s, and he managed to win the Lexus Chase and the Hennessy Gold Cup three times apiece. He looked like the perfect Gold Cup horse but struggled to show his best form when travelling to Britain, which could be a little frustrating for his followers. Edredon Bleu got the better of Beef Or Salmon on seasonal debut in the Clonmel Oil Chase but Hourigan’s charge returned to winning ways in the 2003 renewal of this race. British raider Tiutchev finished second but Beef Or Salmon was too good, finishing three-and-a-half lengths ahead. Kicking King (2004) Kicking King was a useful novice chaser but he took his form to the next level the following season. Finishing second to Beef Or Salmon at Down Royal on his previous start, Tom Taafe’s gelding breezed clear to score by a wide margin in 2004. Victory in the King George was next on the agenda and he went on to claim victory in the Gold Cup at Cheltenham and at Punchestown the following month. Whilst his peak only lasted a couple of seasons, he did manage to win a second King George. Galopin Des Champs (2022) History suggests that winning one Gold Cup can really take it out of a horse, so the fact that this monster went back to win a second the following year tells us that Galopin Des Champs is special. Willie Mullins’ gelding is such a powerful specimen and he jumps and travels with such ease. He has won no fewer than 12 Grade 1 races and will surely be adding to that tally, as the nine-year-old is far from finished.
