DONN McCLEAN: Not long to go now. Just four more sleeps, three if you stay up all night on Saturday studying form and go to first mass on Sunday.
There are potential angles all right, like Min looks short enough for the Supreme Novices’ Hurdle at 3.0 when you consider that Douvan was 3.0 last year, and that Willie Mullins says that Douvan is potentially the best horse that he has ever sent to Cheltenham.
Also, Vautour was 4.5 for the Supreme when he won it two years ago, and Vautour had won the Grade 1 Deloitte Hurdle as well as the Grade 2 Moscow Flyer Hurdle. Min has won the Moscow Flyer all right, but he hasn’t won a Grade 1. Not yet anyway. He hasn’t run in one.
Dig deeper into the past, and you find that Champagne Fever was a 6.0 shot when he won the Supreme, and he, like Vautour, had also won the Grade 1 Deloitte Hurdle. He had also proven his aptitude for the track, having won the Champion Bumper the previous year.
Yeah but, were they talking about Champagne Fever since Galway?
It’s Min fever this year.
There may be a better betting angle to the Champion Chase, or the Champion Chase without Un De Sceaux (pictured). It is difficult to see Un De Sceaux being beaten, all things being equal. They are talking about maybe Special Tiara upsetting him, hassling him on the lead, and that is a bit of a concern. We don’t know what he would do if something led him.
However, it is unlikely that anything will lead him. Special Tiara is fast, but he is not as fast as Un De Sceaux, and it is more likely that Henry de Bromhead’s horse will take a lead.
The angle may lie in going against the old brigade, the former champs. It may be that all three – Dodging Bullets, Sire De Grugy and Sprinter Sacre – are all shorter than they should be.
Dodging Bullets is the reigning champ, but it wasn’t a great Champion Chase last year. Somersby was second, beaten a length, and Somersby was 11 last year. Also, Dodging Bullets was well beaten on his debut this season by Top Gamble in the Game Spirit Chase. Okay, it was his debut, and the ground was very soft, but you still would have wanted to see him run better.
Sire De Grugy is a fantastic racehorse, but he is probably not the horse he was. He has now been beaten by Sprinter Sacre and by Un De Sceaux on his last two runs. When he won the Tingle Creek Chase in December on his third last run, he clocked a time that was significantly slower than the time that the novice, his stable companion Ar Mad, clocked in the Henry VIII Chase over the same course and distance. Digression: Isn’t it a real shame that Ar Mad is not lining up against Douvan in the Arkle?
And when Sire de Grugy was beaten by Sprinter Sacre in the Desert Orchid Chase at Kempton at Christmas, again he was slower than the (same) novice Ar Mad was in the Wayward Lad Chase run over the same course and distance on the day, and Ar Mad only just beat Vaniteux, another novice, obviously. If Gary Moore can get Sire De Grugy to win the Champion Chase, it will be up there with Nicky Henderson getting My Tent Or Yours to win the Champion Hurdle in the training-performance-of-the-season-nay-the-decade stakes.
That’s a negative against Sprinter Sacre too. We know how good he was, he was probably the best two-mile chaser that we have ever seen, he may even have been the best chaser, but that was a long time ago now. He completed that brilliant Cheltenham/Aintree/Punchestown hat-trick in 2013. That’s three years ago. (You thought it was only two, right?)
Lots of water has flown under lots of bridges, lots of fibrillating hearts have been sorted and lots of wind operations have been undergone. Bottom line: Sprinter Sacre is now 10, as is Sire De Grugy. Moscow Flyer is the only horse aged in double figures to win the Champion Chase since the turn of the millennium.
The angles may be with last year’s novices, Sizing Granite and Gods Own. Sizing Granite is a bit of a forgotten horse, which is understandable, given that we haven’t seen him since Christmas, when he was beaten an age by Flemenstar and Simply Ned. But that was on heavy ground. He simply cannot operate on heavy ground.
In that context, the recent rain is not a positive, but it is going to be dry between now and Wednesday, and we know how quickly Cheltenham dries since they put the drains in. It should be good to soft ground, possibly on the good side of good to soft, by Wednesday.
Sizing Granite was dynamite at Aintree last year on good ground, he travelled well from a long way out, and he jumped superbly. A similar performance would make him interesting in the Champion Chase, and new trainer Colm Murphy won the Champion Chase with Big Zeb in 2010.
Gods Own has never really been a fashionable horse, but he got as close as any horse got to Un De Sceaux last year in the Arkle, which proved that he could operate at Cheltenham and under Cheltenham Festival conditions.
He ran a nice race at Kempton last month against Josses Hill. It was his first run in three and a half months, and he travelled like the most likely winner to the second last fence before lack of a recent run and the extra half-mile probably took their toll.
He should be better dropped back down to two miles now, and that run should have brought him forward nicely with a tilt at the Champion Chase in mind.
Felix Yonger is another horse worth considering. He has now won six of his last seven races, including the Grade 1 Champion Chase at Punchestown last April, and he looked as good as ever in landing the Tied Cottage Chase at Punchestown last time, a race that Big Zeb used as a springboard to Champion Chase glory.
He is 10 also, but he comes into the race in the form of his life. He loves good ground, he proved that he could handle the track when he finished second behind Simonsig in the Neptune Hurdle in 2012, and he should not be ignored.
Felix Yonger may be a stakes-saver, but Sizing Granite and Gods Own do look over-priced at 13.0 and 9.0 without Un De Sceaux, and even at around 26.0 in the overall market, each-way. Each-way without Un De Sceaux, you are getting 4.0 and 3.0 respectively for the place part of your bet, and that looks more than fair.
And Sprinter Sacre looks short at 3.0 without the favourite, Dodging Bullets looks short at 6.0 and Sire De Grugy could also be laid at 8.0. If you can lay the three of them at those odds, you are laying them without Un De Sceaux at combined odds of around 1.6, and that might be a good way to be going about things.
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