by The two top betting horses for the Queen Mother’s Champion Chase in March both came through their races at the weekend with little fuss and in fairly similar style. Jonbon retired from Edwardstone after the last leg of the Tingle Creek Chase on Saturday, 24 hours before El Fabiolo finished around five lengths clear on his return to Cork.
Willie Mullins’ El Fabiolo is now a Champion Chase surprise and Jonbon, who was five-and-a-half years out of contention when he was second behind El Fabiolo in the Arkle Cup in March, is shot 11-4 . . Their face-to-face encounter in just over three months is sure to be one of the highlights of the Festival.
Related: Jonbon gives Tingle Creek a chance after Henderson made ‘difficult decisions’
Their respective trainers’ thoughts on what they could do in the meantime, however, were interesting in the context of ongoing concerns about the competitiveness of National Hunt racing away from the major Festivals in the spring.
Nicky Henderson mentioned the Grade One Clarence House Chase at Ascot in late January and the Grade Two Spirit Game Chase at Newbury two weeks later as possible targets for Jonbon. “I can’t see that they are [Jonbon and El Fabiolo] he will meet on the way,” he said. “I don’t think we will be going to Ireland [for the Dublin Racing Festival] and I really hope that Willie will play the same game as us, and that we will be ready for a rematch in March.”
From Henderson’s point of view, that probably makes sense, but he would surely also understand if many hurlers and punters – and Ascot, for that matter – expected otherwise. And Mullins seems keen to run El Fabiolo in Clarence House. “We’ll look at Christmas [at Leopardstown] as well, but he will probably go to Ascot,” said the trainer.
It remains to be seen whether Jonbon will be there to greet him if he does, but it doesn’t take much decoding of Henderson’s comment to suspect that Newbury’s other goal would have more appeal, against opposition who are not so tough.
Ffos Las
12.20 BallymcRoyrie boy 12.52 The Jukebox Man 1.22 Steel Allies 1.52 Cat passing 2.22 The King Of Ryhope (nap) 2.52 John Betjeman 3.22 Boston Joe
Fontwell
12.40 Quel Destin 1. 10 River of Gold 1. 40 It’s Easy 2. 10 Herakles Westwood 2. 40 Easy to Follow 3.10 Aviles 3. 40 It is Latchico
Wincanton
12.45 Lump sum 1.15 Rajaran 1. 45 I do not know properly 2.15 King Turgun 2. 45 Malaya on him 3.15 Heroes And Fun 3. 45 Crest of Fortune
Southwell
5.00 Like a shadow 5.30 Brown Teddy 6. 00 Danielle 6.30 Phoenix Beach 7.00 Enola Gray 7.30 Khabib (nb) 8.00 Rubeus 8.30 Le Rouge Chinois
To be fair to Henderson, he was prioritizing Cheltenham in March for his consistent stars back in the days when Ireland as a whole struggled to muster more than a few Festival winners.
He also ran Shishkin against Mullins’s Energumene in the Clarence House in 2022, which turned out to be one of the most remarkable contests in recent years as Shishkin moved up a few steps from the line. out and extended his unbeaten run over fences to seven races. . But Shishkin was then pulled up in the Champion Chase after jumping eight fences, and Energumene recorded the first of two straight victories in the two-mile championship.
It hasn’t been that long since Henderson’s Altior lost his unbeaten record over fences at the 20th attempt, when he went 1-3 for the 1965 Chase in November 2019. Altior has won just one of his three starts since then, and has his trainer still regrets the decision. ran with him at Ascot.
But as Lydia Hislop, one of Racing TV’s senior reporters and journalists, recently revealed, there were only 47 horses rated 151 or higher in stables in the British yard at the end of the 2022-23 campaign. There are also nearly 150 races at Grade One, Grade Two, Listed or Main Hurdle level to fill in the five months from October to February.
It’s hardly a secret that Irish jumping is in a much better place than its British counterpart at the moment. By some measures, Ireland’s racing industry is much smaller than the UK’s, with fewer horses, fewer meetings and less prize money – but it has the largest share of top hunters and hurdlers, as demonstrated by their growing dominance at Cheltenham in recent seasons.
This is partly because the spending power of the big Irish owners has been surpassed by the spending power of the British jumper fraternity over the last 15 or 20 years. Some of their horses go to British stables – Shishkin, for example, is owned by Dublin-based Joe Donnelly, and Jonbon runs for JP McManus, who topped the owners’ table in Ireland and Britain last year. But there are also notable owners based in Britain who are sending horses the other way, and Rich Ricci, the main driver in the Mullins yard, is a clear example.
The British Horseracing Authority’s much-anticipated “Premierisation” program for jumping and Flat racing begins in January, with limits on the number of courses that can race in a two-hour “window”. Saturday afternoon. It is hoped that it will be easier for weekend viewers to identify the meetings and races that really matter.
If the relative handful of top jumping horses in the British yard start being steered around Grade One races to wait for a less demanding alternative, however, the fare available to potential new fans will still be than small pitches and long options. -which you prefer.
Of course it would be greedy to expect a repeat of Shishkin v Energumene from two seasons ago on a regular basis, but if one of the best and most successful jersey coaches of the last 40 years expects the opposition to play “the same. game” and wait until March, we could be waiting a very long time for anything even close to the Festival.
