Three to follow from the weekend: 24th, 25th & 26th November…
Safe to say things did NOT go to plan for the Cheltenham Gold Cup 1-2 in their respective races at the weekend…
First BRAVEMANSGAME trundled home a well held second in the Betfair Chase at Haydock…
…before GALOPIN DE CHAMPS put in a scrappy round of jumping to finish third in the John Durkan Chase at Punchestown, once again finding the Martin Brassil trained FASTORSLOW too… um… fast for him!
The 2023 Gold Cup form hasn’t quite, to date, worked out all that well… with the future form of the field as a combined group reading…
3 wins and 5 places from 23 starts…
At Grade 1 level they are…
1 win and 2 places from 13 starts…
If you only concentrate on the 7 horses that finished the Gold Cup, their combined future form reads…
1 win and 3 places from 15 starts…
That one victory came in the Betfair Chase on Saturday when ROYALE PAGAILLE stomped his way to victory… but given the fact that 3 of the 4 runners in the race were representing the Gold Cup form, there was obviously a very high chance that one of them was going to get the job done…
So…
Was the 2023 Gold Cup not as strong a renewal as first thought?
Possibly…
Or was it a particularly draining renewal on the participants and it’s left an even bigger ‘mark’ on the runners than it normally does?
Also a possibility…
In truth it’s probably a little early to be making any hard and fast conclusions (or fast and slow conclusions?!?) and I do actually think BRAVEMANSGAME has some ‘excuses’ for his two runs this season… a mistake at the last in the Charlie Hall Chase against a race fit rival in GENTLEMANSGAME, who he was also giving weight to, cost him… and I’m also coming round to the thinking that he doesn’t stay all that strongly beyond 3m0.5f (Betfair Chase was over 3m1.5f)… he is now 4222 (0/4) over 3m1f+ and he’s been beaten at least 6.5L on each of those runs…
GALOPIN DE CHAMPS is the trickier one to ‘make excuses for’… up to and including the 2023 Gold Cup he looked unstoppable over fences… a real take your breath away all time great in the waiting… but he’s looked anything but that on his two starts since then, both at Punchestown… it’s a bit of a head-scratcher in all honesty… maybe winning a Gold Cup by such a wide margin (7L) does just take too much out of a horse… A Plus Tard, Don Cossack, Bobs Worth, Imperial Commander… hell even Long Run and Denman… none of that lot, for varying reasons, were really ever quite the same after their wide margin Gold Cup win…
…it may end up being a similar case for Galopin Des Champs…
I hope not… and it may be something else altogether… but the (very) early signs are far from encouraging…
Interesting to see how things progress as we move through the season…
But enough of the Gold Cup chat… plenty time for that over the next few months… let’s get back to the matter in hand… ⬇️⬇️⬇️
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Three to follow from the weekend: 24th, 25th & 26th November…
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MONVIEL (H Derham)
4th in a Class 3 Novices’ Lmtd Handicap Chase – 12.50 Ascot (Friday 24th)
Beaten 36L here but you got to think he’s plenty better than this given he finished a 2L second behind JPR ONE on chase debut in October, and also won a Class 2 Hurdle last season by 8.5L before finishing a decent 5th in the Betfair Hurdle at Newbury.
I suspect that he doesn’t really want to be going as far as the 2m3f trip he faced at Ascot on Friday and would also prefer ground with cut underfoot, rather than the Good ground he met with… he’s now 0/3, 0p on Good ground and 0/4, 0p over further than 2m…
I would personally be looking at a loose set of Prime Conditions for him as…
2m or less | G/S or softer = 51811 (3/5 – all 3 career wins)
…the 5th in that form line came in that Betfair Hurdle I’ve already mentioned, and the 8th came in an Imperial Cup (22-runners)…
To back up my distance thoughts for Monviel… if you look at offspring of his sire Montmartre that ran in Chases over 2m-2m0.5f (and are aged 10yo or younger) you get stats of…
16/51 | 31% S/R | +£23.18 – W&P 23/51 | 45% S/R
37% above exp
…so a drop in trip for Monviel off the back of this Ascot effort certainly looks the favourable option…
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SWITCH HITTER (P Nicholls)
3rd in a Class 3 Handicap Chase – 3.10 Ascot (Friday 24th)
The conditions the 8yo faced here were pretty much his Prime Conditions…
RH tracks | single figure fields | Nov-March = 3123111 (4/7, 1p – all 4 career wins)
…the only thing that stopped me playing him was that he maybe just needs his seasonal debut run… and after after his run on Saturday he is now 37125 (1/5, 2p) on seasonal debut…
Now he has this Ascot run in the bank he should be of interest in coming starts and he could yet have more to offer over fences (this was only his 7th chase start)…
He was dropped a handy 2lbs to OR 1235 for this effort as well, which puts him only 2lbs above his last and highest winning mark…
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APPLE AWAY (L Russell)
3rd in a Class 2 Graduation Chase – 1.50 Haydock (Saturday 25th)
This was a tricky sort of race to be making her chase debut in and although she fared well enough, it’s not hard to think she’ll come on for the outing and that there will be many easier options for her in the coming weeks and months.
I do think she’ll make into a well above average chaser, but first time out was always unlikely to be the time to catch the mare, with Arctic Cosmos offspring returning 0/26, 5p on chase debut and Lucinda Russell Chase debutants in non-novice races returning 4/56, 13p…
…so on those two stats alone it’s easy to think there will be plenty better to be seen from her, now she has this first chase run tucked securely under her belt…
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In other news…
Newbury’s Coral Gold Cup is the focus this week (the Hennessy Gold Cup to a lot of us!)…
I’ll be covering plenty from the Newbury meeting on the Full NTF Members Service, as well as a sprinkling of races from the other Saturday cards…
Will SHISKIN take up his entry in the Rehearsal Chase at Newcastle? 🤔
Or more importantly will he decide he actually wants to START the race this time!? 🫣
The Coral Gold Cup and the Rehearsal Chase will definitely be covered by myself for full NTF Members, using my in-depth Race Trends as the starting point…
…and there are now two options available to you if you are looking for someone (ME!) to do the hard data-digging for you during the National Hunt season…
>>Full Season Ticket to NTF for National Hunt 2023/24
>>Monthly subscription to NTF for National Hunt 2023/24
And…
I started (finally!) getting stuck into the latest offering from racing author David Owen…
NO SNAIL – The Story of L’Escargot
I’ve read David’s previous racing book… ‘Foinavon: The Story of the Grand National’s Biggest Upset‘… which was a fantastic read… and I’ve been looking forward to tucking into his latest offering for a few weeks now…
I realised that I knew the name L’Escargot… knew it well in fact… I knew he was the last Gold Cup winner to also win the Grand National… but that was about it!! I pretty much knew little else about him… then again as David states in the foreword of his book ‘no book-length account of his career exists‘… so suddenly I didn’t feel as bad about not knowing L’Escargot and his exploits in-depth…
I’ll keep you updated… I’ve been enjoying the read greatly so far…
(by the way you can get David on Twitter here>>>)
*****
And I’m back to AC/DC for some music to close the blog out with… here’s some FLICK OF THE SWITCH (Hitter)… 🤘🤘🤘
There was some very decent form from across the Irish Sea at the weekend: Gaelic Warrior looks capable of winning one of the championship novice chases (Arkle, Turners, Brown Advisory, or NH Chase); ditto Klassical Dream (probably NH Chase), although Favorit De Champdou may have something to say about that. Personally, Fastorslow didn’t beat the 9yo Appreciate It well enough for me to consider him a Gold Cup horse yet. This form was on a par with his 2nd in the Ultima Handicap, and that’s a fair bit short of the level required. One lesson we really need to learn, that’s all of us, is to put a line through the 1st-3 in the Gold Cup when they next run, maybe even the 1st-5.
Hi Ian
Yeah FASTORSLOW is still a little tricky to get a proper grip on… his career has a strange path so far, and like ROYALE PAGAILLE in the Betfair Chase he won a G1 without having to actually run to a G1 level figure… I’m still on the fence with him… he ‘could’ be a proper G1 player but he’ll need to step on plenty from the John Durkan performance (which he could well do given it was seasonal debut)…
Cheers – Ben (NTF)
By the way, I also though David Owen’s Foinavon book was a phenomenal read; you would be hard-pressed to come up with a story like that for a Hollywood movie. I’ve also bought his L’Escargot book, but that didn’t have the same magic. L’Escargot was a seriously good (but under-rated) horse who, if running in modern times, would win 4 out of 5 GC’s. If you are looking for a hard-luck story in the Gold Cup, take a look at Tied Cottage.
Sadly is it not that maybe they don’t often come back year after year -always felt those that do were mostly an exception to that canard. There was a time the Gold Cup winner bar Best Mate who won 3 pretty rum renewals were first time runners in the race (See More Business was forced out by Cyborg pulling up prior as a wrinkle).
Kauto and Al Boum Photo only dual winners since Knight’s horse and not many prior years to Best Mate. Look at many of them they never threatened to win much after. A Plus Tard at least ran 2 decent Gold Cups. Don Cossack at 9 oldest winner since Synchronised and last 10 yo was Cool Dawn, not a revered winner. Struck by how many lost their toe esp Long Run who just about plugged on for a 2nd KG in desperate ground against a likely short runner went from a horse who seemed to speedy for the distance prior to one who was too slow in under a year.
Simon Rowlands based on Timeform rating showed chasers peak between at 8/9 [Hurdlers 7/8]. The 10 year olds record at Cheltenham too I believe bares this out. I’d love to have seen him look at no of chase runs and no of runs and no of years active as a chaser or just a jumper.
Hi Jon
Definitely been a hard race on a horse… I guess the hope with GALOPIN DE CHAMPS was that he won it as a 7yo and had been relatively lightly campaigned prior to the Gold Cup… 1 season novice hurdling… 1 season novice chasing… 2 runs in season before taking the Gold Cup… so looked on a perfect trajectory (if such a thing) to at least land a second Gold Cup (which he still could) if not more… his 2 runs since the Gold Cup, however, suggest that maybe is not anywhere near as likely as it was this time last year…
10yo+ horses in Gold Cup do have a very poor record… same in all G1 races at Cheltenham Festival… Sire Du Berlais the first 10yo+ since Special Tiara in 2017 to win a G1 at the meeting…
And yeah, agree with you on Long Run… seemed to loose a hell of a lot of his spark after winning his Gold Cup… as highlighted by scrambling to a second KG over the less than stamina heavy Captain Chris 😳
Cheers – Ben (NTF)