After being dethroned by Long Run last season, Kauto Star will try for the final time to win an unprecedented fifth King George VI Chase Monday. The weather-delayed 2010 showpiece at Kempton Park did not go to script when it was run in January, with Kauto Star only finishing third, 19 lengths behind younger rival Long Run. “If it's not going to abuse him and it's not too much stress and strain I don't mind him running again,” Kauto Star's owner Clive Smith told the Associated Press. “We won't be doing it next year.” Retirement seemed to be beckoning when six-year-old Long Run again left him trailing in third at the Cheltenham Gold Cup in May. But last month, 11-year-old Kauto Star demonstrated that he still has the legs to compete with Britain's leading steeplechasers by beating Long Run in the Betfair Chase. “He has done so much in racing — 15 Grade One wins. It is even more than Tiger Woods' majors,” Smith said. “We have now gone one ahead of him.” Even champion jockey Tony McCoy describes Kauto Star as “probably the best horse that I have seen in my lifetime.” While Long Run is favorite with pundits for Monday's race, Kauto Star is the second favorite. “Now that Paul Nicholls has got him back to his best, and Kauto beat Long Run at Haydock last month, we're in for one hell of a race,” said Long Run's trainer, Nicky Henderson. “Even last year everyone else wanted Kauto to win. We really wrecked the party.” Long Run will again be ridden by 29-year-old amateur jockey Sam Waley-Cohen, whose father Robert owns the defending champion. “The whole thing is a family endeavor so having him involved adds immeasurably to the entertainment from our perspective and I think the public's perspective,” Robert Waley-Cohen said in an interview after lunching with his racing rivals. “It's such an unusual thing to have at the highest level of sport, an amateur doing it purely for fun.” But last month's success for Kauto Star showed Waley-Cohen not to write off Ruby Walsh's mount as a “force of yesteryear.” “He is the super-specialist at three miles on flat tracks and if we are lucky enough to beat him again the glory would be all the greater,” he said. “There would be no disgrace in being beaten by the only horse to win it four times in a row.” Kauto Star's stable will have another major contender in the King George VI, with dual Champion Chase winner Master Minded stepping up to three miles for the first time.
