Can Ireland land Saturday’s December Gold Cup with sole runner? Every meeting at Cheltenham draws the attention of the Irish trainers and they are sending a significant number of runners over for the weekend’s two-day fixture. Saturday’s main event is the December Gold Cup and Team Ireland is set to be represented by one runner. Kim Roque Kim Roque aims to break Irish drought Ireland doesn’t have the greatest record in this race and their last winner was Michael Winters’ Chatham Street Lad in 2020. Noel Meade won it with Sir Oj back in 2005 and he was the only other Irish-trained winner this millennium. Joseph O’Brien trains the horse in question this time around and the French import ran a cracker to finish second here on stable debut last month. Here we take a close look at his profile and assess the five-year-old’s chances of coming out on top. French form working out well Joseph O’Brien’s Kim Roque was purchased privately after a successful stint in France, where he won three times and finished second twice in 10 completed starts. His first first success came in a race for four-year-olds at Fontainebleau in October 2024. He then followed up with a comfortable two-and-a-half-length victory in a handicap at Auteuil and that form has worked out well, with the next four horses home winning subsequently. Switching to fences in May, he had three starts over the larger obstacles. He produced a smart performance to get off the mark at the first time of asking at Dieppe and he pulled clear to score by four lengths. There was more to come however and he produced a career best performance to finish second in a warm Listed contest in June. His run at Cheltenham last month was rock-solid and there should be more to come. Anthony Honeyball thinks a lot of the winner Kdeux Saint Fray and Kim Roque rallied well to hold on for second, after losing some momentum when he pecked on landing after the last. Statistical edge and key rivals We know he stays the trip, having won over 2m6f in France, and he’s entitled to step forward for that run. Improvement will obviously be needed in this very competitive race, but he remains an unknown quantity and there could be loads more to come. No five-year-olds have won this race in the last decade, but that shouldn’t be an obstacle to victory as a couple of four-year-olds have won it in the past, most notably Frodon. All bar one of the last 10 winners carried less than 11st and a rating of 128 means he carries just 10st 2lb. Cheltenham Festival winner Jagwar heads the market on his seasonal reappearance and it’s very easy to see why. Connections are dreaming that he could be a Ryanair horse and if that is the case, he should be winning here of 148. Other leading contenders are Paddy Power Gold Cup runner-up Vincenzo and Hoe Joly Smoke, who was last seen finishing third in the same race. Jamie Snowden’s Colonel Harry shouldn’t be dismissed either and it’s going to be a cracking race. Joseph O’Brien’s runner remains fully unexposed and that could be a positive, but one thing’s for sure, we’re going to learn plenty about him here.
