Monday Musings: Blank

I must say Storm Bert crept up on me unawares, writes Tony Stafford. Minus 2 degrees C on Friday morning, plus 15 degrees two days later. If you still dealt in Fahrenheit, that’s a difference of 31 degrees. Reach for the medication! He was a windy old bugger, was Bert, enough for the safety-first people in the Exeter, or was it BHA, management to call off yesterday’s fixture after the course had been declared fit for racing earlier in the morning.

So not the greatest of starts for a week without any supporting all-weather meetings. As I write on Sunday morning, over the coming week, there will be 19 jumping cards before the next all-weather programme, on December 1, to be staged under lights at Wolverhampton.

The official thinking must be to give the flat boys a week off before the hard slog through December, January and February engulfs their energy – if they can afford to take the time off. But that means no evening entertainment for a week. Also, granted that we don’t get remnants of the accursed Bert lingering long enough to render conditions untenable, even on such ground-friendly tracks as Kempton and Ludlow today, emergency cards could conceivably be coming into play later in the week

One slight cause for concern, certainly for northern jump racing and point-to-point enthusiasts, comes next Sunday December 1. The two jumps cards that day are at Leicester and Carlisle. The first northern point-to-point of the winter is staged on the same day, the Border meeting run on the inside of the NH course at Hexham, only 37 miles away.

The previous day, this coming Saturday, Newbury stages its biggest jumps day of the year. The Coral Gold Cup, just about established even to an old timer like me enough not to be giving Hennessy yet another posthumous mention, carries 250 grand. The whole card has a handsome £490k in total.

The same day at Newcastle, the Fighting Fifth Hurdle, now denied the services of Constitution Hill but thrillingly replaced by his recent much-publicised gallop conqueror Sir Gino, gets 115 grand, a chunk of it from BetMGM. Their advertising on the two Racing channels is almost as cringe-making as Corals with that idiotic so-called race with non-riders on faux horses brandishing their phones. Maybe Betfair will do a market on it?

Anyway, we're at the mercy of untoward weather patterns as ever, but at this stage with temperatures for the week apparently around a sensible for the time of year 10 degrees C, we should be okay.

The first prize for the Coral Gold Cup will be around £140k. This time I’m not complaining as the tracks do what they can. Yesterday’s Japan Cup at the Tokyo racecourse was worth £2,801,191 and it propelled the winner Do Deuce beyond the £10million career tally. His earlier highlight had been the defeat of Equinox when they were three-year-olds but that world champion easily had his, and everything else’s, measure from then on.

The locals had made Do Deuce the 13/8 favourite to follow on from Equinox and, after 55-year-old local hero Yutake Take allowed him to trail the field for the first eight of the 12 furlongs, he smoothly passed them all in the straight. Then he needed to repel the rallying Shin Emperor, a 26/1 shot, who dead-heated for second, a neck behind the winner, along with the William Buick-ridden Durezza.

Goliath, the King George winner at Ascot, ineligible as a gelding to run in the Arc in which Shin Emperor was unplaced, kept going well for fifth. Auguste Rodin was always in the middle of the field on his final race for Aidan O’Brien, the Derby winner finishing eighth under Ryan Moore, although only four lengths adrift of the winner.

Take was winning his country’s most important race for the fifth time, his first arriving on the legendary Deep Impact, the sire of Auguste Rodin. His wins in the Derby and Irish Derby last year will make Auguste Rodin a major attraction at €30k on the 2025 Coolmore roster alongside fellow newcomer City Of Troy (€75k), this year’s Derby winner. The jewel in Coolmore’s overflowing crown, though, is  Wootton Bassett who has moved inexorably upward since his capture from France. Wootton Bassett is up from €200k to €300k after another stellar year, notably from the first crop of Coolmore-sired two-year-olds this year.

Returning to the Fighting Fifth, the market on the race has responded to the Henderson news by making Sir Gino and the Willie Mullins entry Mystical Power difficult to separate. Mystical Power beat Firefox on his last two starts last season and that Gordon Elliott hurdler is the only horse so far to have beaten the Mullins star Ballyburn, that happening in a 24-runner novice hurdle at the start of Ballyburn’s novice season.

Mullins’ decision to switch Ballyburn to fences - presumably the owners had a little say (or not?)  – had an instant dividend on Saturday when he outclassed the opposition in a novice chase over an extended 2m2f at Punchestown. He hardly looked to be galloping, but the margin over the rest certainly did keep extending. It will take something special to beat him.

Now that Ballyburn is off the hurdles path, the Champion Hurdle contenders are lining up. State Man, the champ, had a reverse on the same card in the Morgiana Hurdle. With his stable-companion Lossiemouth a late withdrawal, State Man was a strong odds-on shot but could not match Elliott’s mare, Brighterdaysahead.

Throughout the racing industry – except maybe for the Mullins stable – State Man was regarded as a champion by default with Constitution Hill unable to take part. It should not have been too much of a shock for Nicky Henderson that Sir Gino could work better than Constitution Hill. He had been a massive over-achiever in all three of his hurdle runs last season.

When he came to Cheltenham second time out following an easy win at Kempton, the French import slaughtered Burdett Road by ten lengths. That horse’s all-the-way win in the Greatwood Hurdle last weekend off a mark of 133 put the performance into perspective.

Sir Gino missed the Mullins-dominated Triumph Hurdle, first two and another five in the field, but came back at Aintree. There he was a comfortable winner by more than three lengths over Kargese, who had been beaten just over a length in second by Majborough in the Triumph.

Kargese’s similarly comfortable success in the Grade 1 juvenile contest at Punchestown on her final start of the season lent further solidity to the form, if it was needed. The one question about Sir Gino, a Listed winner on his sole French start when a 21/1 shot in April of last year, was how Harold Kirk and Mullins missed him, especially as Mrs Donnelly has plenty of horses with the Irish maestro.

This is a match I can’t wait to see. It’s not the first time Henderson had a close-season quandary over whether to send his top juvenile hurdler straight over fences. He had the choice with Altior and Buveur D’Air after the pair had been first and third in the 2016 Supreme Novice Hurdle at Cheltenham. The distance between the pair was eight lengths. Both set off on novice chase campaigns, but after wins at Haydock and Warwick J P McManus’ Buveur D’Air never again ran over fences.

Instead, he seamlessly switched back to hurdles and won both the 2017 and 2018 Champion Hurdles while Altior went on his merry way as probably the best two-mile chaser in living memory. Such a shame that the real Champion Hurdler of his era never got the chance to show he might have been another Istabraq.

That gallop the other day was enough to convince Henderson to continue with Sir Gino at the smaller obstacles – for now at least – rather than go straight into novice chasing. He faces a formidable and beautifully-bred opponent on Saturday in Mystical Power, a son of Galileo out of the almost flawless mare Annie Power, winner of 15 of her 17 races.

The run that remains most firmly in the memory, unfortunately, alongside all the superb victories was one of the two losses. The banker for seemingly the whole of Cheltenham that day, she came to the last in the Mares’ Hurdle with Ruby Walsh sitting still. To general amazement and dismay, she fell.

Mystical Power is her first produce to race and he sets a pretty decent standard. With shared ownership between Mrs Sue Magnier, J P McManus and Susannah Ricci, he could hardly have more distinguished owners. But I still think that Sir Gino can match him.

As to the Coral Gold Cup, I must stay with my long-held view that a second-season seven-year-old fits the formula. I was surprised that only ten of the 31 entered – noon today will tell us how many are left in - are of that age.

One trainer never to have won it will be very keen to do so this year. Kim Bailey won his Gold Cup half a lifetime ago and must be hoping that in Chianti Classico he has another potential winner of Cheltenham’s great race.

He won a big field handicap at the Festival there last year and made a winning start to this campaign with an all-the-way stylish display at Ascot. That brought his mark to a very tough 157, but he is improving rapidly, and his jumping should help him stay at the forefront all through the three and a quarter mile trip.

- TS

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