Galopin Des Champs was so much more than just a winning machine - he was one of the few who found a way into our hearts

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It was hard to imagine a winter without him, now we have to come to terms with life without him. It makes you feel numb just talking about it. 

Just a few short days since his retirement was announced, Galopin Des Champs is no longer with us. His death at the tender age of ten is desperately sad, but what a legacy he has left. 

Two Cheltenham Gold Cups, three Irish ones, one Punchestown one, two Savills Chases, a John Durkan and a chasing debut that left us all drooling means he has a CV up there with the best staying chasers of the modern era. 

He won at three Cheltenham Festivals and that would have been four had he not slithered on landing after a spectacular jump at the final fence of the 2022 Turners Novices' Chase. He won a dozen Grade 1 races and ran in 19 top-level chases in a row. That is some going. 

Galopin Des Champs gallops past a cheering Cheltenham crowd on the way to his first Cheltenham Gold Cup winCredit: Alan Crowhurst

But Galopin Des Champs was so much more than just a Grade 1 winning machine. The facts and figures are all well and good, but every so often a horse manages to find a way into our hearts and Galopin Des Champs got there, just as Danoli, Hurricane Fly, Limestone Lad, Beef Or Salmon and one or two others have done over the last few decades. Audrey and Greg Turley owned him, but it felt like we were all part of one giant syndicate. We partied with them and we'll mourn with them too. 

The Cheltenham Gold Cup is the ultimate prize in jump racing, so given he won two of them and was second in another it should really be his trips to the Cotswolds that he is remembered most for. But that isn't the case. Galopin Des Champs, quite simply, was the noble lord of Leopardstown. That place was his theatre of dreams.

• 'He's so special to us, we absolutely love him. He’s just so kind and so loving' - Galopin Des Champs' glittering career in quotes 

The crowning moment came in last year's Irish Gold Cup, as he completed a sublime hat-trick in the race and returned to a raucous winner's enclosure where chants of ‘Ole-Ole-Ole’ went on for ages. 

There was an official attendance of 18,297 that day, just shy of the 18,500 capacity put on the all-ticket event, and most of them were there to see one horse. He didn't let them down. 

Galopin Des Champs is out on his own in the 2023 Savills Chase at LeopardstownCredit: Alan Crowhurst (Getty Images)

My abiding memory of Galopin Des Champs will be his 23-length destruction of Gerri Colombe in the 2023 Savills. That, ladies and gentlemen, is as good as it gets in this great game of ours. It was Messi doing nutmegs; a Federer forehand; the sweet sound of a Rory McIlroy drive. Everything rhymed that day. It was pure poetry. 

When a dark and handsome beast won a beginners' chase by a mile back in 2021, we hoped something special was brewing. Little did we know just how special. 

What followed was a glorious career, and how lucky we were to be a part of it. Gone, but never forgotten. Rest in peace, son. It has been a blast.

Read more on Galopin Des Champs here

'A superstar nobody will forget' - Galopin Des Champs dies aged ten just five days after retirement announced 

ARCHIVE: Glorious Galopin Des Champs joins the greats as he wins back-to-back Cheltenham Gold Cups in supreme style 

'This is the best chaser I've trained' - Galopin Des Champs' glittering career in quotes 

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