Handicaps pave the way for home revival

ALL the chat on St Patrick’s Thursday at Cheltenham was of the potential for a ‘green-wash’ of seven winners for the visitors, but it was closer to the opposite, with the home team dominating the day to win out 5-2. People even starting to talk about the Prestbury Cup again. Of the eight winners on the board by Thursday, five of them came in handicaps, which was one theme discussed coming into the Festival – the BHA’s handicapping of their own horses. There wasn’t a Langer Dan example on Thursday, but it only took Monmiral two runs to get down to a mark of 138 from 149, when he was second to Epatante in the Grade 1 Aintree Hurdle and Shakem Up’Arry only got a rise of 3lb for his course-and-distance win on New Year’s Day.

Superb Skelton

Dan Skelton superbly plotted Langer Dan and Unexpected Party to score signature handicap wins on Wednesday, but while his double on Thursday was all class in Grade 1s, it was no less a training performance. Protektorat has been excellently handled this term. Skelton basically admitted afterwards that he never really thought he was a Gold Cup horse, but had been training him for that target because of the owners. At the start of the season, he got his way to work back from the Ryanair, but instead of coming back to intermediate trips straight away, he kept the horse in top company, racing against Gold Cup candidates Shishkin and L’Homme Presse, and on the day he was likely peaked for a season best performance, he was probably taking a drop in class. Grey Dawning might have been a little more simple to plan, but don’t forget he was pencilled in for the Brown Advisory after his impressive three-mile score at Warwick, and it was a late decision to revert to the Turners. It paid off in spades.

Two ways to look at Teahupoo

Taking away punting and journalistic professionalism, this writer was hoping Teahupoo would do what he did in the Stayers’ Hurdle. We need Gordon Elliott to be challenging Willie Mullins as often as possible and, in fairness, he has been doing exactly that this week, with no less than four seconds coming into the day three feature. It was great to see the emotion in Elliott’s face after he finally got one over the line. Stepping back from that, there are two ways to look at Teahupoo’s success – a superb training performance and victory for patience or a precedent for more owners and trainers to forgo early season tactics in favour of the Festival. Given what has happened to Nicky Henderson this week, the latter reasoning is perhaps fading, and that of course is no bad thing. Cheltenham needs the early season as much as the early season needs Cheltenham – it’s all worked into the quality of the narrative.

Slowly-run Mares’ Novices’ may have done for Irish hotpots

Golden Ace was a something of a surprise winner in the Mares’ Novices’, but without taking away from Jeremy Scott’s mare, you couldn’t help be somewhat disappointed with Brighterdaysahead and Jade De Grugy. A closer look at the sectionals for the race could go some way to explaining an under-performance, because this was a slowly run contest. The first four home all tipped above 110% Finishing Speed Percentages and the whole field were above 104%. Perhaps that suited the winner, who showed plenty of class to cruise into the race, while both Brighterdaysahead and Jade De Grugy are winners over two and a half miles plus, they may well have been done for toe here.

O’Connor coolness

Inothewayurthinkin might well have been the classic graded horse in a handicap and much the best on the day, but the direction he got from Derek O’Connor in the saddle was a sight to behold. Just think of the pressure. This horse was walloped in the betting. You’ve got 22 fences to jump on heavy ground over an extended three miles and two furlongs against 21 other runners, and then you make a hames in the first fences and almost immediately you’re at Plan B. Some of the big bettors will have been worried but O’Connor treated this like he was riding one down through the woods on a Sunday stroll – allowing his horse to find his rhythm, biding his time, moving up towards the leaders when he felt it was time and in the end Gavin Cromwell’s horse bolted up – his chance maximized by his partner. The best sports people make it look easy and that is what O’Connor did here.