West Coast trying to join four-peat club in Grand National Steeplechase

West Coast is a special steeplechaser on a rare mission in the Grand National Steeplechase at Riccarton today. Pic / Kenton Wright

It may be one of the great injustices of the English language that the term four-peat doesn’t sound quite as cool as three-peat.

It just doesn’t roll off the tongue quite as easily, doesn’t sound quite as snappy or modern.

Which is really not fair when you consider achieving a four-peat at anything has to be significantly harder than its sexier cousin the three-peat.

After all, to four-peat you first have to three-peat, then stick around for long enough, stay healthy and fit enough and still have the desire to do the exact same thing again.

Racing is full of kind of three-peats, whether they be winning the same race three times or winning a Triple Crown, which is usually only beating the same horses three times in a row but sounds cooler than a three or four-peat.

The four-peaters are a rare breed. The most recent, obvious adored four-peater was Winx, who won four Cox Plates in a row. Mic drop.

Yeats won the prestigious Ascot Gold Cup four times and in harness racing Blacks A Fake won the Inter Dominion four times, but not in a row.

There have been five-peaters (now there is a term you really don’t hear that often).

The great Australian sprinter Manikato won the William Reid Stakes five straight years from 1979 to 1983.

Then there is the king of the peats, Koral.

The big southerner won the Homeby Steeplechase at Riccarton seven times and finished second another.

They got so sick of etching his name on the trophy they simply named the race after him.

Which brings us to the $200,000 Racecourse Hotel Grand National Steeplechase at Riccarton today.

It is the 150th running of the iconic race, which could have so easily been lost had jumps racing been canned.

But today’s 5600m is a chance for West Coast to join Winx, Yeats and the Penrith Panthers in the four-peat club.

West Coast is a magnificent horse. Big, raw-boned but with a certain nobility in the way he stands.

What is notable is the way he has carried 73kg in almost every steeplechase he has contested in the past two years, including his second and third Grand Nationals.

There is no doubt he is the most accomplished horse in today’s Grand National but eventually something has to give.

West Coast is now a 10-year-old and carries 7kg more than favourite Jesko, even though the latter has been our form steeplechaser this winter.

West Coast may have carried that same daunting weight to win the last two years but there was no Jesko in those races.

To rub salt in the wounds, Jesko has stolen West Coast’s regular rider Shaun Fannin, who trains the former and so obviously rides him.

West Coast will still be our great racing warrior and he will still do what he always does in the home straight today: continue to go forward.

But will he join the four-peaters?

That may depend on what toll the step up to 5600m takes on Jesko.

He had too much speed and too little weight for Captains Run and West Coast in the Koral (yep, that one) last Saturday and if today’s race was over the same 4250m trip Jesko would start $1.30 again.

But whether his leg speed burns quite so brightly, after 5000m and with 600m more to go, might decide this race.

Earlier in the day, West Coast’s stablemate Berry The Cash tries for one of those aforementioned three-peats in the Grand National Hurdles.

He faces the same weight issues as West Coast but his arch-rival Dictation has been scratched so history awaits him.

Michael Guerin wrote his first nationally published racing articles while still in school and started writing about horse racing and the gambling industry for the Herald as a 20-year-old in 1990. He became the Herald’s Racing Editor in 1995 and covers the world’s biggest horse racing carnivals.