The extraordinary Tiger Roll added another stirring chapter to his story here on Wednesday, winning at the Cheltenham Festival for the fifth time in his career and doing so with the vigour and enthusiasm of a horse half his age. But the climax it deserves will remain unwritten, as this month the dual Grand National winner was taken out of this year’s race, with Michael O’Leary, his owner, claiming the weight he had been asked to carry at Aintree was “unfair”. This was the second winner at the meeting for Denise Foster, who replaced Gordon Elliott as the licence holder at his Cullentra House stable after a picture emerged of the trainer sitting on a dead horse on his gallops in 2019. The Irish Horseracing Regulatory Board is satisfied that Elliott, who lives at the yard, is not involved in day-to-day training of the horses, and Foster will receive the trainer’s share, around 9%, of the prize fund of around £50,000. Tiger Roll won the Festival’s Cross Country Chase in 2018 and 2019 before going on to claim the Grand National a few weeks later. He was as convincing in victory in the same race here on Wednesday, under Keith Donoghue, as he had been in either of his previous successes but, having been denied an attempt to emulate the great Red Rum, the only horse to win the race three times, when last year’s Aintree meeting was cancelled because of the coronavirus pandemic, he will now miss out on a tilt at racing history once again. Indeed, the horse’s withdrawal from the National was the final act in a long-running war of words between O’Leary and Martin Greenwood, the British Horseracing Authority handicapper who sets the weights for Aintree, following Greenwood’s decision to require ask Tiger Roll to carry 11st 9lb, just 1lb below the top weight. The weight represented a handicap mark of 166, while O’Leary has frequently insisted Tiger Roll should be rated “in the 150s”, and therefore carrying at least 7lb less in the National. Eddie O’Leary, racing manager to his brother’s Gigginstown Stud racing operation, said on Wednesday that there were “no regrets” about the decision to withdraw Tiger Roll a fortnight ago. “Aintree is off the agenda and we’ve no regrets about that,” O’Leary said. “He is rated the equal of our Gold Cup horse, Delta Work, and we know he’s not as good. “It’s going to be hard to retire him after that, and he loves racing in any case. He’ll probably have to run at Punchestown [in April] in the Grade One, where he will probably prove he is nowhere near a 166-rated horse, and it is a pity we have to do that. “Cross-country racing got this horse back after he had completely lost his way, but we’ll have to go in a Grade One just to prove he has the wrong rating. He’s a cross-country horse, that’s what he is. Whatever we decide to do, and if he never wins another race, we will enjoy today.” The possible flaw in O’Leary’s argument is that Tiger Roll does not just revel in the unusual challenge of cross-country racing but in the unique test of Aintree’s Grand National fences, too. He was a comfortable winner off a mark of 159 in 2019 and, according to several bookmakers on Wednesday, would have been challenging the well-handicapped Cloth Cap for National favouritism at around 5-1 after Wednesday’s success had he been eligible to run. Tiger Roll’s latest win at the Cheltenham Festival elevated him to rarefied company as only the third horse to win five times at the meeting. Golden Miller won five Gold Cups in the 1930s, while Willie Mullins’s outstanding mare Quevega went one better with her sixth win in the Mares’ Hurdle in 2014. There was a sad postscript to the race, as it emerged Kings Temptation suffered a fatal injury. Clerk of the course Simon Claisse said: “Sadly the Ben Case-trained Kings Temptation suffered a forelimb fracture in the cross-country race and had to be euthanised.” Meanwhile for Elliott there was another reminder later in the day of the price he is paying for his actions when the hugely promising Sir Gerhard, a horse that was in his yard until moving to join Willie Mullins two weeks ago, took the Champion Bumper under Rachael Blackmore.