The Tingle Creek at Sandown’s early December meeting is the best two mile chase in the first half of the season, and quite probably the second best in the whole calendar.
It began in 1969 as the Benson & Hedges Gold Cup and soon started going through some other sponsors and becoming a handicap. Indeed, that was its status when renamed the Tingle Creek in 1979, and it didn’t become a conditions race until 1994. It was a handicap when it was won by the likes of Desert Orchid and Waterloo Boy.
The transition to a conditions race has kept the quality high and yet there hasn’t been a diminution in competitiveness. Single figure fields have been the order of the day on all bar one occasion, but never fewer than five have lined up. Most of the winners are top class and some are exceptional; Flagship Uberalles (three times), dual winners Moscow Flyer, Kauto Star and Master Minded, not to mention Sprinter Sacre and Altior have won. Paul Nicholls trained twelve winners up to and including 2021.
To say Tingle Creek was a bold jumper is an understatement. A flashy chestnut with a big white face, he won 23 of his 52 races in this country after winning five over fences in the USA, where he was bred. He invariably set off in front, “would just eat fences” according to Steve Smith-Eccles, “and never seemed to meet them wrong. He met them right, long or effing long!” He never fell.
He preferred fast going but won on everything from hard to soft. He habitually carried 12-7 to win in handicaps and loved Sandown, whose seven fences in the back straight were made for him. He won there five times. Cheltenham wasn’t his track, though, and he was never Champion Chaser. He retired aged 12 with a dominant display on hard ground in the Sandown Pattern Chase of November 1978, in which he was running for the sixth time; he won that race three times, breaking the track record each time, and finished second the other three occasions. He enjoyed a long and happy life, usually parading before the race named after him at Sandown.
He and his sire Goose Creek, who ran at up to a mile, are named after streams about 15 miles from Vancouver, in British Columbia, a province on the west coast of Canada. There is also a Tingle Creek Hotel in the West Highlands of Scotland, which promises views as spectacular as the horse’s jumping.