We have been away for many years .... You have had it too good for too long.... but now we are back!!!!!

Revenge of the HANDICAPPERS !!!

er he was a grade 1 winner who was officially rated 3rd best won a major gold cup trial ,and was 1 of the few who was improving

best horse one on the day not a good jumper but big heart

Duncster it seems they went too soon with Long Run, a boy among men last season and even though he won he looks like he's not got the finishing kick now. Took a lot out of him seems he's not up for a fight now. If Burton was in a different stable Long Run would have got beat last time out as well.

shouldn't forget quito de la roque. slowboat but stays as well as anything. probably wasn't right in the lexus.

ran below form clearly - gave weight and a beating to the giant bolster at newbury

Everybody knocked Henrietta...

buts thats what you need to do to preserve Gold Cup winners.

Disappointed with the content of this thread. Synchronised is a Grade 1 winner already.  I thought McCoy ran one of his best races and was a race of a lifetime and his horse was best on the day. What, exactly, do people want from a horse race? That the favourite will always win and your pockets/purses will be all the happier for it?

A great race and a good winner ridden by a great jockey!
That KS should not have been in the race at all. Too much media hype and ballyhoo.
They dote on a trainer who has ruined both Denman and KS.

Synchronised is a hardy winner who could get up the hill and motor on at the finish.
The dentist's horse is also bggrd, imo.
This is a hard and brutal game.

Knee jerk reactions over Long Run here.

He ran flat, below par but to say he is finished is daft. I was actually surprised that he won last year considering he had not dazzled at Cheltenham in his 2 previous attempts. Long Run perhaps lined up for the race and thought fecking hell not again.

I sometimes think some horses feel deflated running around Cheltenham, the fences are unforgiving and if they hit 2 or 3 it can start to play on the horses mind. I think Long Run was not enjoying it today and other horses were bothering him, so he threw in  the towel. He said to himself `feck this bollox`

Thats what i think anyway.

personally i think long runs run a decent race, people are talking as if it never got in the race and was beaten out of sight.maybe  it wasnt as strong a race last year as we all thought, denman  and  kauto may have been  well below previous standards, take those two out of last years race and long run may just of been repeating last years performance.s not ru against the winner before so theres nothing to say that hes run below form by getting beaten by him, as for the gian bolster , well he went off like a loony last timeand this time he travelled into the race hence  he ran much better.todays effort by long run doesnt mean he cannot ever win anothe gold cup just that hes probably just got a similar chance to many others.to be honest i think its more interesting when the season starts and theres a list of a dozen possible  contenders plus  any improvrs/ previous season novices that can  have a chance.i think we can safely say now that midnight chase isnt remotely good enuff  to wi a gold cup now.

My view FWIW is that they went too quick. Denis O Regan should get his hole kicked for taking on Midnight Chase who was going to go quick enough anyway. Time for Rupert would have lasted a long time if given a proper ride.

The gallop made for a false result imo. The same race tomorrow would produce a different result. Of course one could say that about the Gold Cup nearly every year, remember Nortons Coin

im with you dementia,theres some utter tosh spouted on here.im a massive fan of the bolster and didnt think he would be in the first 6 but maybe he`s a different horse around cheltenham because when he`s stood up he`s ran some tremendous races around prestbury.if all the form stood up as it should i for one certainly wouldnt be driving a poxey forklift in a factory for peanuts!!!!it was great when kauto and denman and so on and on were around but theyre not there anymore so lets just enjoy what weve got and admit some of us got it wrong,but unfortunately theres an awful amount on here wont admit that so its far easier to say "it was just a poor handicap".well done synchronised and team bridgwater and the bolster

I think it looked a proper race. It is a staying chase and Synchronised stayed well. If Sir Des Champs is as good as he looked he will be a welcome edition to the race next year and we all know Bobs Worth stays up the hill at Cheltenham. Cant wait for next year.

Synchronised won in a quicker time than Denman in 2008 and Kauto in 2007 and 2009.

3 ?

And a track record for this century what a plonker the OP is

After almost three decades of searching, JP McManus found the key to Gold Cup success was in his own hands, writes John O'Brien irishindependent.ie

IT is an enduring appeal of the Cheltenham Festival that, even when equine quality falls short, the genius of those holding the reins never fails to leave a warm glow. So years pass by when the big championship races throw up less than vintage renewals, a doleful mix of hard luck stories and freak results. When it is left to those above the saddle to provide the most lasting and cherished memories.

In the aftermath of Friday's Gold Cup nobody got carried away into thinking we had just seen a performance for the ages. In a way, that hardly mattered. Witnessing Tony McCoy at his incomparable best seemed more than ample consolation. From the precise moment when a hopeless looking cause became almost inevitable victory, fully three fences from home, the race unfolded as a reminder of McCoy's unflinching drive to be first past the post.

Not that it was all about the jockey. In Synchronised, McCoy did not have a reluctant or unwilling partner. It was just that the nine-year-old wasn't built for the supreme physical demands of a Gold Cup and had to be kidded and prodded along from an early stage to maintain any semblance of a winning chance. In those circumstances Synchronised, unquestionably, had the most fitting partner: horse and rider in perfect harmony.

The week was blessed with so many memorable riding performances that McCoy's brilliance on Synchronised would not have guaranteed him the ride of the week accolade. A day earlier Barry Geraghty had cajoled a similar performance from the error-prone Riverside Theatre to edge McCoy and Albertas Run in the Ryanair Chase. Of Geraghty's five winners during the week, none were harder earned or would leave a greater impression.

For true horsemanship, though, it was impossible to look beyond Paul Carberry on Bellvano in the concluding Grand Annual Chase. The trainer Nicky Henderson had six runners in the field and the choice of Carberry for the tricky eight-year-old who cannot be at the business end too quickly was thoughtful and inspired. The poise and sheer neck to sit so far out of his ground while others kicked early for home: who else but Carberry could have pulled it off so spectacularly?

It is true too, of course, that just as all bad rides don't end in defeat, not all great rides guarantee victory. Andrew Lynch didn't leave Cheltenham with a winner, but still managed to enhance an ever-growing reputation. Faultless in the defeat of Sizing Europe in the Champion Chase, Lynch delivered Voler La Vedette to challenge Big Buck's dominance in the World Hurdle a day later only to find the reigning champion inpregnable. Still, he had given the mare every chance of victory and was, correctly, given plaudits for the ride.

That the same maturity was absent when assessing Sam Waley-Cohen's performance on Long Run in the Gold Cup was regrettable. The criticism of Waley-Cohen was born from the widespread feeling that an amateur rider had no place on jump racing's biggest stage, a harsh judgement barely modified after his victory 12 months previously. Instead of celebrating it as a virtue of the sport, many regarded it as a travesty that the jockey was allowed to line up alongside greats like McCoy and Ruby Walsh.

Yet beyond naked prejudice regarding his riding status, what exactly did Waley-Cohen do wrong? In a strongly run renewal, Long Run plugged on gallantly to finish third, three lengths behind Synchronised, and that, as the evidence suggests, is as good as the horse is right now. In three previous races this season the alarm bells had been ringing: sluggish jumping, lack of a kick at the finish. None of this was Waley-Cohen's doing. Much of the criticism aimed at the rider for not booting on sooner and for getting hemmed in on the inside as the field turned for home seemed like needless nitpicking. It made no allowance for riding instructions nor for the fact that, 12 months earlier, he had done much the same thing, biding his time behind Denman until the second last before nosing in front and streaking up the hill to victory. There's nothing to suggest different tactics would have elicited a different result.

Ultimately, the race delivered a good champion. It always does. For sure there's a sense of a lull at the top of the chasing tree right now with the departures of Denman and Kauto Star and as we await a new generation of stars -- possibly led by the hugely exciting Jewson Novices Chase winner Sir Des Champs -- it could be argued that Synchronised's connections helped themselves to a soft Gold Cup during a period of transition.

That perception would not bother them, though. It is nearly three decades since JP McManus first set out to win a Gold Cup and the years brought nothing but crushed dreams and, probably, a growing despair that the great race would ever fall his way. How charming then that deliverance should finally come through a small, gutsy gelding bred by McManus's wife, Noreen, at their own Martinstown Stud in Limerick? The key lay in his own hands after all.

By the great sire Sadler's Wells, they could never have imagined a day like Friday. If lucky, Synchronised would win a few on the Flat and, one day, develop into a smart two-mile hurdler, if never in the same league as his cherished half-brother, Istabraq.

A Cheltenham Gold Cup? No, whatever else he was born to do, Synchronised had not been bred for that. As for the man on top? That was another matter entirely