‘A superstar nobody will forget’: Galopin Des Champs dies aged ten
The two-time Cheltenham Gold Cup winner died just five days after his retirement was announced.
Galopin Des Champs, one of the finest chasers of his generation, has died at the age of ten. Willie Mullins’s stable star was put down on 1 September, just five days after connections had announced his retirement from racing.
The horse suffered a severe and untreatable injury to the upper part of a foreleg while turned out in his paddock. X-rays showed the damage was beyond repair, and vets were unable to save him.
A career of rare quality
Bought privately for Audrey Turley after a winning debut in France, Galopin Des Champs joined Willie Mullins as a hurdler rather than a ready-made chaser. “We thought when he won the Martin Pipe that we had a really good horse and he could be Gold Cup material,” Mullins recalled of that early promise. “It was more hope we had a Gold Cup horse than thought we had one.”
Galopin Des Champs retired with 15 wins from 26 starts and £1.9 million in prize money. Twelve of those wins were Grade 1s. They included back-to-back Cheltenham Gold Cups in 2023 and 2024, and an Irish Gold Cup hat-trick from 2023 to 2025.
His finest hour came in the 2023 Savills Chase, a 23-length demolition of Gerri Colombe. He was runner-up in the 2025 Gold Cup and won that year’s Punchestown Gold Cup. He retired after a third-place finish in this year’s Irish Gold Cup.
A retirement cut short
Owners Greg and Audrey Turley had planned a second career for the horse in eventing with the Walsh family. That plan, announced only a week before his death, will now never be realised.
Tributes
Cheltenham Racecourse, trainer Willie Mullins and jockey Paul Townend, who rode the horse in every start but four, all paid tribute. Townend called him a superstar nobody will forget, a description few in racing would dispute.
