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Guilty as charged of underestimating Native River as Brits secure 'Triple Crown'
As Native River ground his rivals into submission in Friday’s Timico Cheltenham Gold Cup, one sentence kept ringing around my head like an incessant earworm.
Pardon my prejudices, it went, but the day a horse who couldn’t win the four-miler wins the Gold Cup is the day we should all give up. You’d think an earworm that you’d composed yourself would be less intolerable than some catchy tune that refuses to relent. Seemingly not.
Being spectacularly wrong is an occupational hazard, but, in my defence, that damning line was written over a year ago. With conditions as gruelling as they were, things were very different at Cheltenham this time around.
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