THE Karl Burke trained Spycatcher heads the weights on 9-13 for this year’s Ladbrokes Ayr Gold Cup to be run on Saturday September 19. Five-times winning trainer Kevin Ryan’s Volterra comes next on 9-11, with John and Thady Gosden’s Spy Chief and Richard Hannon’s Aramron both on 9-10.
Last year’s Gold Cup winner Run Boy Run and Silver Cup winner Candy (both Richard Spencer) have been allotted 9-2 and 8-13, while the highest Scottish trained runners are Gangsta Man (Jim Goldie) on 8-5, Figjam (Katie Scott) on 8-4 and Jonny Concrete (Iain Jardine) on 8-3.
The top 25-rated horses declared on Thursday September 17 will go for the Gold Cup, with the next 25 contesting the Silver Cup and the next 25 allowed to race for the Bronze Cup.
A televised draw will be made for starting stalls in the Gold Cup on Thursday September 17.
This year’s £180,000 Ayr Gold Cup will be the Saturday highlight of our 3-day meeting here on 17, 18 and 19 September and will be covered live on ITV Racing and Racing TV.
The Gold Cup has been run over 6 furlongs on the current site here at Ayr since 1908, with the early years seeing the legendary rider Steve Donoghue win in 1912 and 1926, before trainer Jack Jarvis completed a unique hat-trick of 3 successive wins in the pre-war-runnings of 1937 and 1938, as well as the first post-war renewal of 1946.
Jockey Eph Smith rode those Jarvis trained winners in 1938 and 1946 before returning to win the race on Klondyke Bill in 1961 and there was a run of 3 Scottish trained winners in 10 years between 1966 (George Boyd) and 1975 (Nigel Angus twice) which has left the locally-trained 75 hero Roman Warrior as the last Scottish trained winner of the race 51 years ago.
Current trainer Mick Easterby won the race back in 1977 with Jon George, but the modern-day training record is held by the late David “Dandy” Nicholls, with SIX winners in a glorious 11-year spell between 2000 and 2010, a feat which current trainer Kevin Ryan could still equal or pass as there are 5 winners on his Gold Cup roll of honour already between 2007 and 2021.
Karl Burke trained his third Gold Cup winner with Lethal Levi in 2024 after 2 winners in the 1990s and the retirement of dual-winner Frankie Dettori means there are 15 current jockeys with a single winner of the race on their c.v but none having added a second which only Dettori and Adrian Nicholls have managed this century.
Current Scottish trainers Katie Scott and Jim Goldie have both finished third in the race with Gweedore for Scott in 2023 and Jack Dexter for Goldie in 2013, while no horse has won the race twice since the David Nicholls trained Funfair Wane won in 2002 and 2004 for the late Liverpool, Hamburg, Southampton and Newcastle footballer Kevin Keegan and his wife Jean.