Road To Cheltenham: Edwardstone should be Champion Chase favourite

There’s lots to talk about this week, as there will next, so let’s get down to business.

An exquisite ride from Niall Houlihan on his much-improved mount Editeur Du Gite took down both Big Beasts in the two-mile division in the rescheduled Albert Bartlett Clarence House Chase at Cheltenham last Saturday. Those bookmakers whose immediate reaction was to retain Energumene as ante-post Champion Chase favourite over Edwardstone presumably had their eyes shut.

Yet in the subsequent minutes, after Edwardstone was hastily made favourite, many punters clearly decided the 100/30 offered by Paddy Power and Betfair was too big about the titleholder. At the time of writing, Energumene is available at 5/2 best and Sky Bet even make him outright favourite at 7/4. Edwardstone is 2/1 best with BetVictor, Boylesports and Betway – and he’s joint with Energumene in many books. The winner you can have at 6/1 with BetVictor and Unibet.

My conclusion – then and now – is that Edwardstone’s body of work, combined with some reasons to believe he can do better than Saturday’s narrow defeat in March, makes him the rightful favourite. Preferring Energumene involves buying the ‘new English fences’ excuse put forward by trainer Willie Mullins and ignoring innate foibles that had not hitherto been sufficiently tested. I would not dismiss the winner out of hand, either.

Editeur Du Gite’s presence ensured this race was not run at a crawl, as was the fear when only the Big Two and Amarillo Sky were declared for the original Ascot version, lost to the freeze. However, he did not go hard – as perhaps was expected by Houlihan’s peers and as the partnership had done when blasting off in the Desert Orchid, burning off all pursuers. Nor did he go even.

From the third fence, Houlihan had Editeur Du Gite settled into a flowing rhythm up front whilst Energumene was held up about six lengths off that pace – having jumped the first big and screwy – and Edwardstone was anchored by Tom Cannon a further three lengths or so adrift towards the rear. Both were a little keen early on, but Edwardstone continued to over-race on the downhill sections pretty much throughout.

From then until two out, when he reached in response to Houlihan’s request to stretch his rivals, Editeur Du Gite lost no marks for technical execution whereas Edwardstone was scruffy at times and Energumene – as Road To Cheltenham devotees might have fully expected – adjusted right, rider Paul Townend repeatedly steering him back to the inside line on landing.

Both had left Houlihan to set whatever fractions he preferred, with the chasing Amarillo Sky never quite upsides him and not good enough to remain a credible threat when the pace lifted from three out. A particularly neat jump from Editeur Du Gite at that point caused commentator Ian Bartlett to declare, in a cautionary tone, that Energumene and a soon-to-weaken Funambule De Sivola were still “five lengths off this leader”.

Both Townend and Cannon – the latter even further back – nonetheless appeared confident of picking him up. Editeur Du Gite didn’t jump two out cleanly but bounded away swiftly and was still at least three lengths ahead whilst Energumene went right, checking Amarillo Sky on landing, and Edwardstone was still inexorably gaining.

Coming to the last, however, it looked as though victory was within Cannon’s grasp – even before Energumene made his critical blunder. Townend angled Energumene right on the approach but Cannon produced Edwardstone immediately upsides on his right, his mount getting a flyer and his seeming main rival perhaps crucially afforded no room to make his characteristic adjustment. The result was Energumene not getting high enough and being knocked sideways by the impact, losing all chance.

Meanwhile, Edwardstone powered after Editeur Du Gite and managed to get a head in front. But a combination of having wasted energy by travelling too strongly, the effort of reaching a well-ridden leader from too far off that pace, Houlihan having saved enough and Editeur Du Gite being a very good horse meant the lead changed again as they neared the winning post. At the line, the latter had wrestled back victory by a head.

Earlier last week, winning trainer Gary Moore had admitted on the Nick Luck Daily podcast that he’d only supplemented Editeur Du Gite for the Clarence House in the belief the original level of prize money had been retained – it hadn’t – and he didn’t expect him to win. Afterwards, his son Josh, the horse’s former rider and assistant trainer, revealed their end-of-season plan had been to roll on to the Game Spirit later this month and then miss Cheltenham in favour of Sandown’s Celebration Chase at the end of April.

Now, it’s all change because once again they have a serious Betway Queen Mother Champion Chase candidate – a race they won in 2014 with Sire De Grugy, who also carried the silks of Steve Preston (plus his family and friends). That Festival assignment will be the most significant ride of conditional Houlihan’s burgeoning career to date, following this first Grade One success and just his 59th overall.

It will be more difficult because Editeur Du Gite won’t be underestimated by his rivals as he was on Saturday. However, he might already be as good as the hugely popular Sire De Grugy and may not yet have finished improving. The progress from his seeming plateau when fourth in last year’s Grand Annual has been marked. His jumping is a major asset and although he prefers to lead, he doesn’t just have one way of pacing it – as he proved here.

However, I prefer Edwardstone for the Champion Chase. Trainer Alan King has consistently stressed this robust horse thrives on racing, so the too-fast ground of autumn followed by an occupational-hazard unseat at Kempton and then a frozen winter have put a serious dent in his campaign. Speaking to Racing TV’s Stewart Machin at Huntingdon the day before the Clarence House, King emphasised how much a race was needed. “I can’t hang onto him for much longer,” he said, with a Captain-she’s-gonna-blow-type warning.

After seeing him finish second, Barbury Castle’s own Scotty observed: “I’m very pleased with him. We needed to get a run in today. The Kempton race obviously went wrong and he’s got very fresh again. Just turning to go down the hill, he’s started to tank and Tom’s had to take him back a little bit and just get him to try and relax a wee bit.

“And I’d said: look, today wasn’t the be-all-and-end-all and to play him late, which he did. And I thought he’d played it perfect, really, and then full marks to the winner, he’s come back and battled up the hill. But we look forward to the challenge at the March meeting… I think we’ll see a different horse.”

King believes this “proper race” will have set Edwardstone up for the Festival, dispensing with the need to contest the Game Spirit later this month. The accretion of these various angles – improvements in demeanour and tactical positioning, plus intrinsic ability – for me adds up to the Champion Chase winner. I was impressed by the easy potency with which he bridged the gap to Editeur Du Gite from what had looked an overly ambitious position turning for home.

Regular readers of this column will be familiar with my obsession with the chink in Energumene’s armour – namely, his proclivity for adjusting right at his fences. I also regularly bore Ruby Walsh with it on the weekly show. The thing is: there hadn’t to date been a rival good enough to pressurise him sufficiently to make it a problem – and that includes Shishkin, who may have beaten him at Ascot last year but still jumped the poorer of the pair.

I will readily admit I hadn’t expected it to be so much of an issue on the more galloping New Course last Saturday; I’d deemed it more of an issue when he returned to the tightly turning Old Course for a far deeper edition of the Champion Chase than the one that crumbled around him last March. That Edwardstone’s presence on his immediate right on take-off at the last on Saturday appeared to force a major error potentially exposes a conspicuous deficiency, however.

As mentioned earlier, Mullins blamed Energumene’s scrappy jumping on the white guard rails, take-off boards and trim permanently incorporated into all fences and hurdles at Britain’s 40 jump tracks between March and December of last year. These elements were traditionally orange in colour but research carried out by Exeter University into equine vision found that white provided increased contrast and visibility for horses, leading to an improved jumping performance and therefore reducing risk.

Against this research has been ranged much anecdotal grumbling by various racing people, the latest of whom was 20-times champion jockey and ITV racing pundit Sir AP McCoy. “I think it’s the biggest load of rubbish,” he declared, before going on to provide his own carefully evidenced counter-data. “Do they honestly think it’s going to stop horses from falling? There have still been plenty of fallers over them. I don’t think horses jump any better or any worse over them.” QED.

Rather more sensibly, Mullins had taken the precaution of installing similarly white-dressed obstacles at his Closutton facilities to familiarise his horses with the novelty they would face during his many British raids.

“It was his first time going to England and jumping the new white fences, even though he had jumped them at home, and he just baulked at the first,” the trainer asserted. “It was definitely a useful exercise for us and I’d say it’s something a lot of Irish horses are going to have to prepare for because if you miss the first at Cheltenham, your race could be gone.”

I guess it’s possible Energumene’s thousand-yard stare at the first fence could have been caused by its white accessories – horses are individuals, after all – but it doesn’t explain why there has been no discernible abatement in the efficacy of Irish-trained horses, coming over here, winning our races… And if Ireland’s dominance really can be reversed via such an easy fix, we’re gonna need some more white paint.

Yet in fact – pesky data again – their winning strike-rate thus far this season (therefore subject to change once the full term’s results are in) is higher than the previous nine according to official British Horseracing Authority figures. Collectively, Irish raiders are currently operating at 17.7% as opposed to 13.3% last season overall and a peak during this ten-year span of 16.6% in 2014/15.

So, unless Energumene is uniquely sensitive to certain visual stimuli, it seems to me more likely that other factors were at play. His jumping last Saturday wasn’t dissimilar in execution – even if a little scruffier – from what we’ve seen from him before. The key point of difference was, racing over obstacles on a left-handed track for merely the fourth time in his career, his opposition was tougher. That’s when conceding ground and rhythm at every fence adds up to trouble.

It will be fascinating to discover how the analysts at Closutton will react to this reversal. The brains trust of Mullins, son Patrick, assistant trainer David Casey, Townend and Ruby Walsh made tactical adjustments between last season’s Clarence House and Champion Chase – not that they turned out to be needed when Shishkin never went a yard, Chacun Pour Soi unseated and everyone else proved incapable.

Energumene is versatile in that sense and Townend certainly won’t be giving Editeur Du Gite so much rope, albeit the main threat is likely to be Behind Him!

Of course, Mullins also has at least one more card to play in Blue Lord, who produced a substantial performance to win a Grade One at Leopardstown when dropped back to two miles over Christmas. He returns to the scene of that epiphany in this Saturday’s Dublin Chase over the same course and distance. It looks a one-sided contest on paper, however.

Perhaps for the first time in his career over fences, Ahoy Senor was handed a task that truly suited him – and in last Saturday’s Paddy Power Cotswold Chase, he duly delivered his best performance to date. But although an extra furlong will undoubtedly help further, is that best good enough to trouble the Boodles Cheltenham Gold Cup principals?

Regular readers of this column will know I’ve been ‘playing trainers’ by mapping out my preferred campaign for Ahoy Senor this season. It pivoted around the Coral Gold Cup (Hennessy in old money), Cotswold Chase and Gold Cup. I had no argument with the Charlie Hall first nor, if you weren’t going to try Newbury, the Many Clouds but I would rather have barricaded the doors of Kempton than have him run in the King George. (If he had a Christmas engagement, it would have been in the Savills Chase. But that’s not terribly British these days, is it?)

Ahoy Senor is, of course, a great big galloping klutz. But a talented one. Like Energumene, he jumps right and he did exactly that all the way around Cheltenham’s New Course, with rider Derek Fox steering him back to the inside line whenever he could, just as Paul Townend had done little more than an hour earlier.

He was also characteristically keen, still tanking along on the second circuit, but he was happy to accept a lead from the dwarfed Frodon after rubbing through the top of the fourth fence to his right. Bryony Frost had asked her mount for a good jump and he’d responded in a way Fox could only imagine, neatly negotiating the fence and moving to the front against the inside rail.

But just as Ahoy Senor showed when headed by L’Homme Pressé – and others, after four out – in the Brown Advisory before rallying strongly for second from two out, he does not need to lead. Indeed, he made such a good impression of a professional racehorse here that he even dealt with a muddling pace – travelling well behind Sounds Russian when, having pressed Frodon for the previous two fences, that rival took over up front at the fifth last.

Sounds Russian had jumped with notable fluency until that point but got the very next fence badly wrong. Although he was looking for it, ears pricked and eager to jump, he and Sean Quinlan got their wires crossed and he smashed through it. It didn’t stop him, however. Quinlan ventured a look behind and, although his mount didn’t do much better at the next when hitting it halfway up, on entering the straight he’d still preserved the clear advantage he’d worked.

Favourite Protektorat, despite guessing at six out, had seemed to be travelling strongly two fences later but started hanging right after three out and was undertaken by Ahoy Senor entering the straight. The former waved the white flag before the next fence when shortly also passed by the rallying Noble Yeats, who’d jumped scruffily at times and been outpaced from six out.

Ahoy Senor had got to the leader’s quarters by that point and galloped on for a narrow lead at the last, which he naturally met wrong – getting in too close – whilst Sounds Russian nodded on landing. But after a brief duel, the latter found only one pace up the hill whilst Ahoy Senor pounded onwards, with Noble Yeats continuing to gain ground to be nearest at the finish and Protektorat also finding a second wind from the last rather than dropping right away. Both the third and fourth were conceding 3lb to the winner and 6lb to the runner-up, but these were cheap late gains.

Beforehand, Peter Scudamore – husband and assistant trainer to Lucinda Russell – had been talking about lowering Ahoy Senor’s sights for the Ultima, figuring that the second-season chasing form he’d displayed to date perhaps made that handicap the more viable target. But it would have meant another date with the less suitable Old Course. This resurgent display has rightly convinced connections to stick with their original, more ambitious yet also more suitable plan.

It was an emotional win for the family, with Russell’s father Peter – a part-owner of Ahoy Senor, who’d followed his every step with pride – having passed away, aged 95, five days earlier. His daughter spoke with candour and clarity after “such a rough week”, in which she had no spare emotional capacity to fret about the horse’s assignment as she would usually.

“Do you know it’s funny – this season I’ve been half-making excuses for him and you feel like an idiot, you feel like a little girl going ‘Oh yes, he was a little bit over-enthusiastic’ and I hate that sort of image of me,” she reflected.

“But actually, I know the horse and I know that he was too enthusiastic. It was all too much for him… Whereas today he actually settled down, he was a professional racehorse – and they have to do that. They’ve got to be able to settle. He’s got immense ability but he’s got to use it correctly.”

She referred to yak about a flat track suiting Ahoy Senor but, clearly, that has never been the key. It’s a proper stamina test on a galloping track that he wants, so – clumsiness notwithstanding – the Gold Cup will suit. As argued in this space previously, it’s one of the few top-flight races in the calendar that should truly suit him. However, he’s now a top-priced 14/1, which is probably about right, but if you risked the 50/1 available when I was setting out that argument after his readily excusable King George defeat, you’ve got a viable each-way bet.

Of Sounds Russian, trainer Ruth Jefferson gave a typically level-headed assessment. “It was nice to see him travel and jump with so much enthusiasm,” she said. “Sean [Quinlan] did what I wanted him to do, really, which was be a little more positive and maybe the last fifty yards caught him out, ridden like that today. We’ve probably learned a little bit from it – he’s handled the track.”

Asked by Racing TV’s Tom Stanley whether he is entitled to have a go in March, she said: “He could run well in a Gold Cup. But whether he’s got the class to win… I think he’d need a lot of things to go right to win a Gold Cup. I think he’s just a solid horse, who always runs his race, but might just find a true Gold Cup horse maybe just a little bit better than him.”

She’s probably right but, as she also acknowledged, his eight owners are excited by having a horse good enough to run in chasing’s blue riband – and it’s just possible that if Jefferson and Quinlan had their time again, they might not have gone on so far out and Sounds Russian might have had a little more left for the final hill. Then again, the Gold Cup could be run at a more solid, end-to-end gallop that would perhaps suit the winner and third even better.

Expect Noble Yeats to be wearing headgear of some sort when you see him next. Trainer Emmet Mullins applied cheekpieces to help him to victory in last year’s Grand National and he will surely reach for them again – or something a little bit stronger – next month. That should help this horse to hold his position that much better and thereby be on the premises when turning for home, rather than having too much ground to make up.

Those bookmakers who pushed him out to 12/1 or 10/1 in the aftermath of this performance were a little brave. He’s snapped back into 7/1 now – second favourite behind Galopin Des Champs in some books. If you followed Ruby Walsh when he recommended Noble Yeats at 66/1 in the fourth edition of the current Road To Cheltenham series, you still have a very live bet. The question remains whether his form is good enough to win, however.

Not uncharacteristically, trainer Dan Skelton reacted relatively positively to Protektorat’s defeat, asserting when interviewed by David Yates for last Monday’s edition of Nick Luck Daily that his five-and-a-quarter-length fourth was “very acceptable as a prep run”.

“I had more ambition than that going into it,” he acknowledged. “I thought it was him a little bit short of 100% but I wasn’t just going there thinking: ‘this is nothing but a prep run and where he finishes is irrelevant’. I thought he’d win. I felt he was in the 90% fitness category, not the 100%. But actually, the truth was he was more like in the 80s. I thought he was fitter than he was.

“And then they’ve gone slow, he’s been a bit keen and he took a blow at the wrong time as they’ve quickened up, so that’s accentuated Protektorat being out of contention quickly and then he’s stayed on from the back of the last because he’s got his second wind and he’s loads of ability.

“So, it’s a little bit of a complex debrief, but I’m not worried at all about going forward. I know what I’ve got to do. In a weird way, if he’d have won yesterday, you’re a bit like: right, everything is all right, don’t touch it, don’t break it, just walk around on eggshells. Whereas we’ve got some work to do and we can get our sleeves rolled up and we can get stuck into that work. So, in a weird way, it was a very decisive result for what we’ve got to do going forward.”

Skelton is an excellent target trainer, among other skills, so it would be foolish to dismiss Protektorat at least for a place in the Gold Cup. He would have been a closer third last year bar for a mistake at the last and his Betfair Chase romp suggested an improved operator. However, deeper ground may be required, and as Racing TV pundit Jonathan Neesom argued on Saturday, Haydock has a way of flattering horses.

Unless, of course, your name is A Plus Tard – who more than backed up his brilliant 2021 Betfair Chase success with a dominant victory in that season’s Gold Cup. This year, he heads to Cheltenham on the basis of just one awful run – blamed on an infection – when attempting to defend his Haydock crown. He also missed the Savills Chase due to banging a joint that morning.

Yet by dint of not making the faux pas of running again, he finds himself second favourite in many lists. Absence often makes punters’ hearts grow fonder. That’s why the long-lost Monkfish is only 20/1, his Gold Cup chance following his 2021 Brown Advisory success preserved in aspic. I prefer my form fresher.

Advised 01/12/22: Noble Yeats at 66/1 for the Boodles Gold Cup with William Hill

Advised 19/01/23: Corbetts Cross at 25/1 for the Albert Bartlett with Coral or Ladbrokes

Advised 01/12/22: Ahoy Senor at 25/1 for the Boodles Gold Cup with various bookmakers

Advised 14/12/22: Hiddenvalley Lake at 8/1 for the Albert Bartlett with Bet365 or William Hill

Advised 05/01/23: The Real Whacker at 12/1 for the Brown Advisory with Paddy Power or Coral

Advised 19/01/23: Impaire Et Passe at 6/1 for the Ballymore Novices’ Hurdle with various firms

Advised 26/01/23: Banbridge each-way at 20/1 for the Sporting Life Arkle with various firms