Remember last year’s Eider Chase? The one in which 12 started out and only two came home, three if you count Morgan Be, who stopped and then started again? (You can still start again if you pull up, you just can’t start again if you fall.) Finishing at intervals of minutes rather than lengths? The race that everybody used as an example when they were talking about the new whip rules a few months ago? How many finishers do you think there would have been in last February’s Eider Chase, everybody said, if the riders were only allowed administer three and a half strokes on the final circuit?
Well, it’s probably not going to be like that tomorrow, which is a bit of a shame in a sense, the sense being that I have backed Portrait King, whose trainer says that he loves soft ground. Good to soft, they were calling it earlier in the week. Now they are saying good to soft, good in the home straight, sunny intervals. None of which is good news for a horse who reportedly couldn’t have it soft enough.
There is another sense though, the sense that a race like last year’s is really in nobody’s interest. Apart from the fact that it doesn’t look good – and racing has enough problems without sticking the ball in the back of its own net – from a betting point of view, it makes the race more of a lottery than you ideally would like.
Maybe I’m convincing myself, but I want to think that good to soft ground should be fine for Portrait King, and I am winning the debate. True, Maurice Phelan’s horse handled soft to heavy ground well when he finished second to Smoking Aces in the Porterstown last December, and he handled heavy ground well when he won Punchestown’s Grand National Trial three weeks ago. However, both of those races were run over three and a half miles or thereabouts. He is stepping up to four miles and a furlong tomorrow, so you have to think that the extra four or five furlongs should compensate for the better ground. And it isn’t as if it’s going to be fast.
Significantly, the Portrait Gallery gelding has form on goodish ground. His best run in a bumper, when he finished third behind On His Own (winner of last month’s Thyestes Chase) and Some Target (coincidentally, winner of the 2011 Punchestown Grand National Trial) at the 2009 Leopardstown Christmas Festival, was on yielding ground. Also, his best run over hurdles, when he finished second behind the highly talented Lambro at Naas last March, was also on yielding ground. It isn’t that he doesn’t handle goodish ground, it is just that he has limitless stamina, and that he handles soft ground well.
We don’t go much further than three miles and five furlongs in Ireland, unless you go over banks and stone walls and barbed wire fences at Punchestown (only joking about the barbed wire fences, but the banks and the walls are real and high), so if you stay further than that, you want deep ground in order to maximize your efficacy. However, there are a couple of mudlarks in the line up tomorrow, so it may actually be in Portrait King’s favour that it won’t be hock deep. (You had me at we don’t.)
He has much more in his favour besides. He is a highly-progressive seven-year-old who seems to have reached a new level of performance since he started to race over marathon trips. His two most recent runs, his only two runs over three and a half miles, his only two forays beyond two miles and seven furlongs when he wasn’t in a point-to-point field, are head and shoulders above anything he had done previously.
When he won the Punchestown Grand National Trial, he was winning under rules for the first time, and it was just his fifth run over fences. So he has masses of scope for progression.
More than that, however, the manner of his victory at Punchestown was hugely impressive. He travelled and jumped well through the race, he was the only horse still on the bridle going around the home turn, Davy Condon looking around him for potential challengers, and he picked up really nicely when his rider gave him a squeeze to win eased down.
There was substance to the performance as well, because the time was good, and the right horses – progressive young staying chasers Up The Beat and In Great Form – chased him home.
The downside is that, while the Irish handicapper raised him 7lb to a mark of 120, the British handicapper has raised him a further 11lb, as is his prerogative (I know, I know). So he races off a mark of 131 tomorrow, which is 18lb higher than the mark off which he won the Punchestown race. It’s not ideal, but he has such scope for progression, and his Punchestown performance is so solid, that he is still a horse that you want to keep on side.
The other potential downside is that, since top weight Arbor Supreme has come out of the race, the weights have gone up 9lb, which means that Portrait King now has 11st 8lb to carry instead of the 10st 13lb that he had in the long handicap. Not ideal, you would have thought, when you are set to race over four miles and a furlong.
Apparently, though, you would have thought wrong. Unusually for a staying handicap chase, the Eider is a race that historically favours highweights. Four of the last six winners carried 11st 6lb or more, and all six carried 11st or more. It is a race in which class appears to count for a lot more than weight carried, and that should suit Portrait King well.
I was hoping that he would have been available at a little bigger than the 6/1 and 7/1 that they offered when they opened the ante post market. I was thinking, small Irish trainer going to Newcastle, horse 18lb higher than he was when he won his first ever race, they’ll hopefully overlook him a little, so I was surprised and a little disappointed initially that 7/1 was the best on offer. Then I got into the race, and realised that they actually had overlooked him in offering as big as 6/1 or 7/1.
Is 4/1 or 9/2 value now? I’d say so. I can see him being sent off the 3/1 favourite when people cotton onto him a bit in the morning. It is not a great renewal of the Eider Chase, in the same way as tomorrow’s renewal of the Racing Plus (don’t say Post) Chase at Kempton is not a vintage one eider. (Ahem.)
In Arbor Supreme’s absence, Captain Americo is the biggest danger in my book. He has form on good and yielding ground, and he ran a cracker on his most recent run to get to within two lengths of Bold Ransom in a three-and-a-half-mile chase at Haydock. Bold Ransom has let that form down since, but third-placed Jaunty Journey has upheld it. That said, James Ewart’s horse doesn’t have even nearly the scope for progression that Portrait King has, and he is only a point bigger in some lists. Portrait King may be favourite, but he is still over-priced, he is still the value of the race for me.
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