Let’s face it,
every Cheltenham Festival is a thrill a minute with the best jumps
horses in the business bidding to write themselves a place in the
history books at the home of National Hunt racing, and this season’s
renewal, scheduled between March 10 – 13, will certainly be no
exception, writes Elliot Slater.
One certainty as
we close in on ‘The Greatest Show on Turf’, is that champion
Irish jumps trainer Willie Mullins will head to Cheltenham with as
strong a hand as ever, having a number of outstanding horses in his
care at present, many of them such as Vautour, Annie Power, and
Champagne Fever (to name but a few), owned by Rich and Susanna Ricci,
whose pink and pale green silks have become an almost ever-present in
the winners enclosure in Ireland, and have also been sighted a time
or two in Britain as well this season.
Faugheen pictured] is the
horse the Ricci’s hope will carry their colours into the hallowed
winners circle at Cheltenham on March 10 in the Champion Hurdle, a
race for which the unbeaten French-bred gelding is currently
ante-post favourite having never before tasted defeat in a career
spanning seven races under rules. Expected by most pundits offering
insight and opinion to
make it eight from eight when he bids for the Grade 1 Christmas
Hurdle on Boxing Day at Kempton Park, anything other than a
convincing win will be a disappointment for a horse who genuinely
appears to have real star quality.
He certainly
looked
the part when beating Ballyalton in the Neptune Investment
Management Novices Hurdle at last year’s Festival before going on
to prove even more impressive when slamming Valseur Lido by no less
than 12 lengths at the Punchestown Festival six weeks later,
appearing to be better suited by the minimum trip of two miles than
he had by the longer trip at Cheltenham.
If you’re
looking for a horse to possibly bring to an end Faugheen’s unbeaten
run then the outstanding candidate so far this season is the Nigel
Twiston-Davies-trained The New One. He won all three of his races
before the Christmas break in fine style, looking particularly smart
when showing a visible change of gear to beat
the highly regarded Vaniteux in the Grade 2 StanJames.com
International Hurdle at Cheltenham’s December fixture, a race
he took on in preference to going head-to-head at this stage with
Faugheen at Kempton.
Twiston-Davies
is very much of the opinion that had his charge not been badly
hampered at an early stage of last season’s Champion Hurdle he
might very well have beaten eventual winner Jezki. As it was, the
gelded son of King’s Theatre still ran a cracker in finishing
strongly to take third place, beaten less than three lengths by
Jessica Harrington’s surprise winner. And having won the big race
last term and then proven that no fluke by following up at the
Punchestown Festival in beating former dual champion Hurricane Fly,
Jezki is certainly not out of the reckoning either, with connections
training him specifically for a repeat bid for the hurdles crown. We
know he handles the track well, appreciates the normally decent
ground, and has proved himself a horse capable of delivering the big
performance on the right occasion.
There’s no
doubt about it; the 2015 Champion Hurdle could well turn out to be
one of the best for some years if all the principals make it to the
starting line.
Glossing over
the Queen Mother Champion Chase (for no other reason than the two
ante-post favourites, Sprinter Sacre and Sire de Grugy have not been
seen so far this season and both are under injury clouds), and
leaving aside the World Hurdle, which at this stage looks wide open
with last season’s hero More of That having run poorly first time
out this campaign while most of the other contenders have been taking
it in turns to beat each other, let’s concentrate on the other
feature event of Cheltenham 2015 which is, of course, the Cheltenham
Gold Cup.
Always a
tremendous race and rarely providing anything less than a thrilling
finish for any number of reasons, it would be fair to say that this
season’s renewal is going to have to go some to better the
breathtaking finish last term when the relatively unconsidered Jim
Culloty-trained outsider Lord Windermere (20/1) came from a seemingly
impossible position at the third last to storm up the hill and get
the better of a titanic tussle with On His own to score by a nose
under a brilliant ride from Davy Russell.
The enigmatic
The Giant Bolster was back in third, the King George VI Chase winner
Silviniaco Conti was fourth, and the reigning champion Bobs Worth
finished fifth in a race that produced a hard-to-predict result, but
that showcased everything that is great about National Hunt racing.
Lord Windermere
is now a winner at each of that last two Cheltenham Festivals having
12 months earlier sprung another
surprise when landing the Grade 1 RSA Chase. The old adage
‘horses for courses’ certainly rings true with this very talented
gelding who is at his best on spring ground when putting his
undoubted stamina to good use on the steep climb from the home turn
at Cheltenham. An excellent third on his seasonal return at
Punchestown in December in the Grade 1 John Durkan Chase over an
inadequate trip, Lord Windermere is still a horse that many of the
jumps public don’t seem to have taken as seriously as they should
and he remains an attractive each-way betting prospect, at the very
least, to run a big race back at the scene of his two greatest
triumphs.
Silviniaco
Conti, beaten less than two lengths into a close fourth in that great
race last March, has since proven himself to be a leading contender
to land the blue riband event this time around. He bounced back from
his defeat to win nicely at Aintree a few weeks later and was clearly
short of peak fitness when beaten on his seasonal return at Wetherby.
You’d be best judging champion trainer Paul Nicholls’ charge on
what he subsequently did at Haydock when he
destroyed a high-class field in the Grade 1 Betfair Chase –
winning the race for a second time – eventually coming home two
lengths clear of the talented Menorah, who has been in terrific form
this season for Philip Hobbs and Richard Johnson.
Nicholls knows
exactly what it takes to win the Gold Cup having done the business
twice with See More Business, as well as more recent high-profile
successes with the superb Kauto Star and the hardly less inspiring
Denman, two of the best three-mile chasers of the modern era. The
Ditcheat handler has been very bullish about Silviniaco Conti being
good enough for this season’s Gold Cup and he will be trained to be
at his very peak on the big day, regardless of anything else he does
prior to the main event.
Bobs Worth may
well be back for another crack at the title, and Willie Mullins is
mulling a bid for the race with the possibly doubtful stayer
Champagne Fever – likely to be better suited by the shorter Grade 1
Ryanair Chase, in my opinion – while Jonjo O’Neill’s Holywell
is no forlorn hope either in a race that will surely prove well worth
the wait.