Cheltenham Festival 2016: Thistlecrack's World Hurdle win gives Colin Tizzard his cue to start celebrations

Eight-year-old turns race into a procession with display of the meeting

Thistlecrack powers to victory in the World Hurdle (PA)

Though marvelling at the extraordinary equine talents brought over to Cheltenham by Willie Mullins these past three Festivals, now too numerous to mention, it is fair to say that the locals have also been yearning for a new star of their own to follow and they have surely found one.

No Mullins horse – not Douvan and Annie Power on Tuesday or Vautour on Thursday – has won a major prize this week with more authority and class than the Colin Tizzard-trained Thistlecrack, who turned the World Hurdle into a procession; only Alpha Des Obeaux could get anywhere near him once Tom Scudamore lightly pressed the “go” button after the turn for home.

Thistlecrack is an eight-year-old and so may already be at, or near, his peak, but Tizzard is still able to make the sort of spoilt-for-choice noises normally heard at Mullins’ post-race debriefs.

“We have had a loose plan to send him over fences next season and run him in the Gold Cup as a novice chaser next year,” he said. “But the way he jumped and won that, he could come back for this again. Fortunately, we don’t have to worry about that now.”

With the World Hurdle safely in the bag thanks to Britain’s banker and so half the pressure lifted, Tizzard is now free to fret over Cue Card’s Gold Cup challenge this afternoon. “I said I wouldn’t have a drink after this, but maybe I’ll have a half!” the trainer said.

Owner Rich Ricci was pleased enough to see Vautour run away with the Ryanair Chase, delighted to “take [Michael] O’Leary’s money,” in reference to the chief executive of the sponsoring airline, but admitted to “tinges of regret” that he had not been watching another scintillating Festival display from his gelding in the Gold Cup instead.

Vautour, a late switch from Friday’s showpiece to this less demanding, but by no means straightforward, contest because he was not considered on top form at home, outclassed O’Leary’s pair Valseur Lido and Road To Riches – who race under the banner of that owner’s Gigginstown House Stud – and did so with the panache of a champion, which left Ricci wondering “what if?”

“Of course, there’s a tinge when you see him beat last year’s Gold Cup third Road To Riches and win like that,” Ricci conceded. “I want to win the Gold Cup and two chances are better than one [he still runs last year’s runner-up Djakadam]. But there’s always next year and we can all start having this conversation again in the autumn. ”

Ruby Walsh confessed that if he had been training Vautour, he would not have taken him to Cheltenham at all this year. The decision was down to Mullins and even he admitted he had been in two minds. The trainer remained concerned until Vautour, soon jumping with his usual aplomb, settled into a rhythm. “He hasn’t exactly been delighting me in his work,” Mullins said. “It was a surprise to our yard he could win that the way he did.”

Earlier, Walsh had allowed himself a gentle pat on the back before getting back to business as usual when Black Hercules became his 50th career Festival winner in the JLT Novices’ Chase.

“Unbelievable. Fifty winners. That sounds nice, but it’s not enough,” he said typically and ominously, before allowing Mullins to elaborate on their long association and congratulate the 36-year-old on a phenomenal career in the saddle.

“I remember seeing Ruby for the first time when he was 17, still an amateur, winning for his dad, Ted, who was also riding the horse from the stands!” recalled Mullins. “A little later, there was a funny mare in our yard I didn’t ride for some reason – maybe I was hungry and wanted some lunch! – and we put him up. It was in a field of about 18 and he came from last to first to win on the line and I thought right then and there that this boy is the future.”

That made it six wins for the week for Mullins and Walsh and they later moved on to seven when Limini landed the odds in the first running of the Mares’ Novices’ Hurdle, leaving the trainer one shy of his record total of eight at the Festival, set last year, and the jockey on the same mark as his 2009 record haul, still with one day to go.

A less welcome total was marked with the death of Niceonefrankie, bringing the fatalities at the meeting to five. The Venetia Williams-trained 10-year-old fell late on in the Brown Advisory & Merriebelle Stable Plate.

RSPCA equine consultant David Muir called the deaths “deeply concerning”, but stressed the need for the causes to be assessed. “I’ve been concerned by the way hurdles react in races,” he said, adding: “You have to consider the number of horses racing. The competitiveness of the races might be an issue.”