Best Mate for me is another horse I never really took to, probably due to his sparing appearances on a racecourse, his first Gold Cup win was his 4th and final run of that season with his subsequent 2 Gold Cup wins being his 3rd and final runs of those respective seasons.
Yes winning 3 Gold Cup’s is a tough task but to call them so-so would be being rather generous (Commanche Court, Trucker Tavern and Sir Rembrandt would have been very average winners of Gold Cups for sure). His peak years (age 7, 8 and 9) conincided with not a great bunch of staying chasers.
Best Mate ticked very few boxes for me, chasing wise he had a period from late 2001 (his first season out of novice company) to late 2004 (his final completed race before his tragic death) where he was very good and never finished out of the first two in 13 races. So he was limited in the longevity argument.
He ran in just two Limited Handicap races, in one (the 2001 G2 Haldon Gold Cup) he was equal bottom weight with Cenkos and was getting 1lb from Desert Mountain and 12lbs from Fadalko whom he beat 20L and 35L respectively. In the second (a G2 Limited Intermiediate Chase) he was actually top weight and failed by ½L to conceed 18lbs to Wahiba Sands (who’s best performance arguably came when 2nd in the 2002 G1 Melling Chase).
One might argue that this was the start of the era where more grade races started to pop up which meant a lot of the top jumping stars weren’t asked to compete in handicaps like days of old (mores the pity) and while that is not their fault, when you are talking about horse racing GOATS and comparing greats it does (to me) factor into overall calculations. That is probably why I preferred Denman (due to his two top weight Hennesey wins) over Kauto Star even though Kauto had more natural talent and was the more versatile performer.
Its why I would have loved to have seen Constitution Hill (after winning the 2022 Christmas Hurdle) run in the 2023 Betfair Hurdle at Newbury prior to winnning the 2023 Champion Hurdle.