Five talking points from The November Meeting and Navan

We all love a front-runner who drags rivals out of their comfort zones and then courageously pull out more when challengers arrive on their shoulder. Dan Skelton went a heck of a gallop in the trainers’ championship last season and tenaciously clung on to his lead when Willie Mullins drew upsides, only to succumb as the finish line loomed.

A gruelling race that ended in defeat might have broken the spirit of many, but it has evidently left no mark on Skelton.

He and his team had a phenomenal three days. A Pai De Nam got the ball rolling by winning the first race on the meeting before L’eau Du Sud and with Panic Attack landed feature races. Soldier Reeves also struck on Sunday, plus he had eight other runners at the meeting make the frame.

At the end of last year’s November Meeting, Skelton’s prize money haul stood at £939,000. This time, he’s on £1,189,494, which represents a 26.67% increase. The front-runner is seeing strides that other aren’t and is pinching lengths left, right and centre.

He’s already got double what 14-time champion Paul Nicholls has secured, with another multiple champ, Nicky Henderson, trailing him by more than £900,000.

Skelton told the media on Saturday: “Dad always say it’s not what you win in a day, it’s what you win in a lifetime and if you hang in there and work hard, this sport can give you unbelievable highs that you can’t get anywhere else. It’s simply about running the right horses in the right races and if I’ve horses for these races I want to be running them. I love running horses, I don’t shy away from it.”

Mullins sits 266th in the table, with £3,750 in the bank. We don’t know if he’s on the bridle or not, because he hasn’t even picked it up yet.

As usual, the maestro gave the November Meeting a miss, and he is not bothering with next weekend’s £200,00 Betfair Chase, either, when Skelton will saddle hot favourite Grey Dawning.

Skelton is a best-priced 2-5 to take the crown, with Mullins out to 3-1 to claim the spoils for a third successive season. The odds looked stacked in the front-runner’s favour, with the clash between Il Etait Temps (Mullins) and L’Eau Du Sud (Skelton) in next month’s Tingle Creek Chase already having extra significance. 

The debate about whether Jonbon is as effective at Cheltenham as he is elsewhere has rumbled on for several years now. Those insisting that he isn’t were feeling pretty smug after his heavy odds-on defeat when seeking a historic third success in the Shloer Chase on Friday.

L'eau Du Sud dished out a 15-length drubbing to him, even though he would have been 10lb better off had the race been a handicap. Jonbon would not even have finished second, either, had J J Slevin not spent the run-in desperately trying to retain his partnership with Matata after a blunder at the final fence.

Never mind the easy winner; the fully exposed Matata came into the race with an official rating of 157, having been beaten out of sight off 160 on his previous start. And yet here was Jonbon, rated 171 at his peak and successful first time out in each of his previous five campaigns under Rules, struggling to get past him, even with Slevin battling gravity.

Jonbon was conceding 6lb to Matata but, through all weights and measures, the ten-time Grade One winner, having his first run after a breathing operation, was way below his best.

“He may have lost a battle, but the war [the Tingle Creek at Sandown] is in three weeks’ time,” a defiant Nicky Henderson said afterwards. “This race was much hotter than it was in previous years, but I don’t think you can just say Cheltenham is his bogey because it is not. He has won this the last two years, but it’s never his most impressive performance of the season first time out – he’s got away with it the last two years but by the time you get to Sandown, brilliant.”

Fighting talk from Henderson, but a distortion of reality.

BHA handicapper Chris Nash had Jonbon running to a mark of 170 when landing the Shloer Chase on testing ground in emphatic fashion in 2023 (the winning time was similar to Friday), but “only” 166 when a workmanlike winer of the Tingle Creek a few weeks later. Last year, he rated his Shloer Chase performance as a 163, followed by a marginally better 166 at Sandown.

Past evidence, then, suggests it is a myth that Jonbon will make a quantum leap at Sandown on Saturday fortnight. The number crunchers reckon he regressed by 4lb in 2023, and only progressed by 3lb in 2024.

According to the official assessors, he has not been operating at his peak since the spring of 2024, when he ran to a rating of 170 at both Aintree and Sandown, having also achieved that figure at the start of that season at Cheltenham.

He could not live with Il Etait Temps in the Celebration Chase at Sandown in April, and it could just be that this magnificent horse, still yet to finish out of the first two in 24 races, is on the decline. The debate about Cheltenham is merely a distraction.

Jonbon seemed to resent being hassled for the lead on Friday and his jumping, such a weapon in the past, became ragged. The RaceiQ data reveals he lost 5.53 lengths in the air, and he failed to jump best at any of the 13 fences, whereas 12 months earlier he had been top of the charts at seven of the obstacles.

His overall RaceiQ Jump Index score is 7.2 but his past four efforts at Cheltenham have been marked as 5.7, 7.8, 6.4 and 6. That lends weight to the theory that he is not at his best at Prestbury Park, but it may just be that it goes deeper than that. 

Final Demand was not in action at The November Meeting but most people at Cheltenham were glued to the big screens and their phones watching him in action at Navan. And they were noty disappointed as he made a spectacular chasing debut.

A couple of racegoers standing by the finishing post impersonating aeroplanes as he crossed the line, and you can understand why as he came home 13 lengths clear with his jockey, Paul Townend, allowing himself a broad grin.

This beast of a horse may have come up a bit short at Cheltenham in March, when third to The New Lion in the Turners Novices' Hurdle, but he was only marking time over the smaller obstacles and gave us a hint of what may be to come here.

His winning distance was accentuated by Wingmen, the runner-up, making an error at the final fence, but the runner-up had already cracked after threatening to make a proper race of it. And it could have been a much bigger distance, as he won without being at all extended, with his Finishing Speed percentage being 114 per cent.

Final Demand did not touch a twig and if RaceiQ did sound effects then there would be a huge celebratory klaxon when you clicked on this race to see exactly what happened. 

The data, measuring his entry speeds, exit speeds, time spent in the jumping envelope, speed lost and speed recovery times added up to an A+ or a great big gold star. Give him both, if you like.

He gained almost 26 lengths with his jumping. That can happen in novice races because that tally accounts for his efficiency, plus the inefficiency of the opposition. 

What cannot be disputed is his Jump Index score of 9.2 out of 10. That’s a collectors’ item for any chaser, let alone one making his debut over fences. By way of comparison, none of the experienced stayers in the Troytown Chase, earlier on the card, managed a figure higher than 8.6.

The six-year-old swiped ground at all 14 fences, giving an early clue as to his scope when entering the third fence at 23.68mph and exiting it at 24.44mph. It’s not often that horses are faster on the way out than on the way in.

He did not manage that trick again, but he jumped best of the whole field at half the fences, with all his metrics adding up to a flawless start.

The bookmakers now make him no bigger than 7-4 to win the Brown Advisory Chase at Cheltenham in March. He’s set the bar extremely high and is a fabulous prospect for the months and years ahead.

Could he be another Denman . . . 

Paul Nicholls came in for some stick in various quarters on Friday for daring to mention the “D” word (Denman) after his exciting No Drama This End had breezed home under Harry Cobden in the Grade Two Albert Bartlett Novices' Hurdle.

But those suggesting he should not have the audacity to mention his promising five-year-old in the same breath as the titan who began his career about 20 years ago should perhaps clean out their ears.

Nicholls did not say he was another Denman. What he said was “If I have got another Denman, perhaps it’s him. He stays, he jumps, he will make a great staying chaser. We’ve just got to look after him.”

There are plenty of things in racing that cost lots of money, but dreams are for free. Nicholls has always been one of the game’s great optimists and who can blame him for hoping the imposing No Drama This End might just go to the top.

He was speaking moments after No Drama This End had beaten the Champion Bumper runner-up with authority, having posted similarly impressive displays on his point-to-point debut and first bumper at Warwick last season.

Cobden had given a hint of what was to come in a blog for Paddy Power a few days beforehand, when he revealed: “He is a very, very good workhorse at home. He's schooled well, he's working well and I'm excited to be riding him. He’s the one novice that I've sat on this year that I just thought ‘yes, this lad could be proper’. Look we've got lots of nice horses, but this chap just feels a bit different.”

For what it is worth, Denman also won easily on his point debut and then won his first four races over hurdles before finding one too good at The Festival in March. We all know what he then did when unleashed over fences.

To digress for a moment, a plea to racing’s rulers to call Friday’s race something other than the Albert Bartlett Novices' Hurdle, the same title as the Festival race in March. It’s bonkers. 

It has paid to follow Gavin Cromwell when he has sent runners to Cheltenham over the past couple of seasons. He had nine winners from only 30 runners at the track in 2023-24, and last term 17 of his 42 runners either won or made the frame. The highlight, of course, was Inothewayurthinkin mastering Galopin Des Champs in the Gold Cup.

Cromwell experienced the other side of the coin at the November Meeting, when his six challengers were all beaten. Three of them were pulled up, including Thecompanysergeant in the Paddy Power Gold Cup, while the well-fancied pair of Secret Force and Bud Fox fluffed their lines.

The Racing Post had got only 29 per cent of Cromwell’s horses running to form in the past fortnight on Sunday, while Timeform make it 50 per cent. Maybe it’s somewhere between the two.

It is never an easy thing to calculate, for a variety of reasons, but there can be little question that a stable that has gone from strength to strength in recent years is having a little wobble.

Since October 27, Cromwell has had 97 runners and his sole winner has been Only By Night, who won a Grade Three contest at Naas last weekend by a short head. Plenty of those 97 have been outsiders, but equally 20 have been sent off at 5-1 or shorter. 

Bud Fox ran well in defeat on Sunday, as did his two Troytown runners at Navan. But one out of 97 is a grizzly return, whichever way you cut it.