Cheltenham Gold Cup: Runners, start time & preview as Galopin des Champs aims to win three in a row

“A third in a row would put him into a very select category of greats.”

Looking at the odds for the Cheltenham Gold Cup, it isn’t obvious that Galopin Des Champs is bidding to do something so rare.

Only four horses, including the legendary Arkle and Best Mate, have ever won a hat-trick of Gold Cups.

And yet the Willie Mullins-trained horse is the odds-on favourite for Friday’s Gold Cup, which goes off at 16:00 GMT, and meaningful challengers seem thin on the ground.

So what makes Galopin Des Champs so special?

“I think he’s got just lots of heart,” Mullins told BBC Sport at his sprawling Closutton stables in County Carlow.

“He’s obviously got athletic ability, he’s better than average. But when push comes to shove in those last two furlongs, when you’ve got to dig deep, this guy seems to have reserves of energy.

“And it’s also mental. It’s his heart. He just gets down, you know, when the going gets tough, the tough get going and that’s what he is. He’s tough.”

Mullins has more than 200 horses in training, and over the past 35 years has trained some stars of the sport.

But he said Galopin Des Champs – affectionately nicknamed “the good one” by stable staff – will rank as the best of them all if he wins the Cheltenham Festival showpiece on Friday.

“I’ve had some wonderful horses here. If he does the treble, we’ll probably have to give him that accolade, but until then we’ll wait,” said Mullins, 68.

But does he know how good he is?

“The more he wins, the more bigger he gets in himself,” said Galopin’s groom Adam Connolly. “You’ll be trying to wash him off and he’ll be kicking and biting at you. And as the season goes on, he gets a bit bigger and he knows anyway.”