Road To Cheltenham: spotlight on the two-mile division

This is the drama-queen division of the season. To top it for news, Galopin Des Champs would need to elope with Fact To File, Inothewayurthinkin be arrested for industrial-scale polo-mint embezzlement and Gaelic Warrior reveal he employed a doppelgänger to take his place for the first half last season whilst he was busy overseeing a pyramid scheme from the Maldives.

Meanwhile back in reality, in the past six days alone – and without hoof hitting turf in anger – there has been further activity ahead of the festive period’s twin two-mile Grade One events. And yet the Unibet Champion Hurdle ante-post market – a medium proven to love the sound of its own thoughts – purports to have heard it all before. Well, most of it at least.

First, Barry Connell announced a further setback to Supreme runner-up William Munny’s campaign, meaning one run – in the Irish Champion Hurdle – between now and Cheltenham is his best-case scenario.

“The horse pulled out of his box lame,” Connell announced on Saturday. “We got the vets to come down and do the X-rays and scans. It’s nothing serious. He’s pulled some muscles in his hindquarters. He’ll miss a couple of weeks of work, but it’s reasonable to hope we should have him back for the Dublin Racing Festival.”

I don’t like the equivocation of that language – “it’s reasonable” and “should” – on top of the fact this will be the horse’s second missed engagement in six weeks. It’s bad news for this column’s ante-post position not only because is he currently available at the price already taken (the indignity), but there’s also a good chance he’ll be beaten by horses with superior match-fitness even if he makes the DRF, prompting him to be pushed out further.

It’s an ill wind that blows no good, however. The following day, Gordon Elliott suggested he might use it to sail Brighterdaysahead into Leopardstown’s December Hurdle – the race she took apart last year, but which also took apart her season, possibly leaving her all run out by the time she lined up at Cheltenham when she could barely raise a Grade One gallop. (Either that or she hates the place. Travel may not broaden her mind.)

Fences had been her intended destiny this season but she pulled muscles when schooling, causing her to miss two novice-chasing engagements to date and counting, and so that plan could be postponed in the short term at least. 

“Obviously, it’s not ideal going and jumping fences [for the first time] at Christmas, half the season’s gone,” Elliott told Racing TV’s Gary O’Brien. “It’s not impossible she could be supplemented for the two-mile race in Leopardstown. When you see William Munny coming out yesterday… it's definitely cutting up. They say you should never be afraid of one horse.

“I didn’t enter her in the [December Hurdle] because I thought at the time we were going chasing. I’ll have a chat with Michael and Eddie and see what they think, but it wouldn’t be a shock if she was supplemented…

“I have her in good form, she’s going to work this week, and we’ll have a better idea then where we are but whether we go chasing or stay over hurdles, I’m not sure. If you asked me two or three weeks ago, I’d have said definitely chasing but just the way the races are cutting up you never know.” [link to interview]

The “one horse” to whom Elliott referred is Lossiemouth, who might find challenging a full-pelt I-set-’em-up gallop from King Of Kingsfield (who would also need supplementing) judging by the at-full-revs hints she threw out in the Morgiana and last year’s Christmas Hurdle at Kempton. But to the grey mare’s likely relief, Brighterdaysahead also surely wouldn’t want to revisit the eyeballs-out spectacle of 12 months ago on her belated seasonal debut.

The day after making his announcement at Cork, Elliott added on the Nick Luck Daily podcast that Wodhooh is also under consideration for the same Leopardstown race. Along with their stable companion Casheldale Lad – last seen in the process of a career best when tipping up at the last in the Hatton’s Grace – she at least has the advantage of already possessing an entry.

The British can okey-cokey just as well as the Irish. Our dancefloor is Kempton’s Christmas Hurdle, where Jeremy Scott has swapped in the surer-footed Golden Ace from the International whilst Dan Skelton is heading in the opposite direction with The New Lion as he navigates the weeks separating that fall in the Fighting Fifth from lining up in the Champion Hurdle.

“I just feel like the position that we’re in, we have to make sure the next race is super smooth and the best race to make sure that it is super smooth – or to give it the best chance of being that smooth – is the International,” Skelton told Racing TV’s Josh Stacey on the latest Road To Cheltenham show.

“If something negative happened at Kempton because there’s more emphasis on speed – and I feel like he is a bit better going left-handed as well – so if something negative happened there, I [would] then need to put back together two negatives rather than the one that we have at the moment.”

Skelton also took issue with those who questioned The New Lion’s focus after he fleetingly shaped to run out approaching the fourth hurdle at Newcastle. The siting of that hurdle, he and brother Harry argued, meant it was hidden behind a fence on the adjacent chase course as you rounded a bend. Other horses had also briefly shaped to make an unscheduled exit at the same point earlier that day.

“I’ve no interest in listening to people telling me that was a kink in him at all because I know the horse – with respect – better than anyone who’s said that. He’s 100 per cent straight, our horse, and he would never have not jumped that hurdle,” Skelton said.

As you would expect, the facts of his assertion are provably true. In the opening race, the leader Night Ride Home and winner Le Beau Madrik (the latter a Skelton project), both considered bearing hard left at the wing. Two races later, front-running Scarlet Jet did the same thing. These three horses are all novices, however. Every other horse, including all the handicappers in the sixth race, ran straight past without giving it a sideways glance.

In fairness, The New Lion is no more experienced than Scarlet Jet if you go purely by number of outings, so perhaps he’s entitled still to be green, but Nick Alexander’s Perth winner didn’t triumph at the Festival last March and isn’t seeking to win the pinnacle of hurdling in two starts’ time.

Neither this show nor its accompanying column has suggested The New Lion’s side-eye necessarily betrayed a “kink” in him, but it does suggest a rawness that needs managing and potentially renders him vulnerable if all opponents regard him as enemy no.1 and, for example, compel him to make his own running – as Ruby Walsh explained in last week’s Road show. [link]

Skelton’s point about right-handed tracks was interesting because we have no clear evidence of why he holds that view. The Turners Novices’ Hurdle winner has never raced in that orientation over public obstacles and, although he raced wide when winning his bumper at right-handed Market Rasen, this appeared to be in search of less chewed-up ground rather than any other motive. If the horse adjusts in any direction at his hurdles, however, it would be mildly to the left.

Skelton’s mention of “speed”, with reference to avoiding the Christmas Hurdle, is also worth noting – as Ruby highlighted in yesterday morning’s show. [link] Skelton has previously simultaneously asserted the speed of the Fighting Fifth had contributed to The New Lion’s fall and yet the horse had demonstrated the pace for the Champion Hurdle – not necessarily a contradiction but hardly unequivocably so either – so, this latest allusion could be interpreted as a tad unnerving.

Ultimately, its relevance hinges on how the primary event is run in March. The Champion Hurdle on the sharper Old Course is often not conducted at a Kempton clip but will surely be a whole lot less of a dawdle than a potentially one-sided International on the galloping New Course.

One character whom Scott foresaw might be sliding down the chimney this Christmas is Sir Gino. Golden Ace is yet to have the pleasure of his company, but Nicky Henderson seems to be inching closer to committing last season’s Fighting Fifth winner to Kempton rather than keeping to fences in the following day’s Desert Orchid as the horse continues on his comeback from injury and serious infection complications earlier this year.

Asked by Racing TV’s Nick Luck last Saturday at Sandown whether his work regimen is pointing at a Christmas return, the trainer said: “Possibly. We did school him this week and we did jump hurdles.

“It was just somewhere to start. It was the first obstacle he’s jumped since that chase at Kempton on the day after Boxing Day. He hasn't jumped an obstacle since… though we probably did school him when he went wrong and got his issue before the Game Spirit… but he hasn’t jumped anything since then, so we schooled him over hurdle.

“Yes, I think the Christmas hurdle is probably… We know that Constitution Hill is not going to go there, I think, and therefore the race is wide open, and I think it’s a nicer way to start Sir Gino off on this knew expedition. After that what happens, I have no idea.”

The Champion Chase market thinks it knows what it means for the rest of Sir Gino’s season, although it was relatively slow to react:

The less said the better about the idea of Constitution Hill being aimed at the Grade Two Henry II Stakes at Sandown next May, as Henderson’s interview went on to outline.

As my French correspondent pointed out in an aside, his first milestone would be becoming the first-ever winner under Flat Rules (in any substantive sense, betting without the Corsican equivalent of Catterick) for his sire Blue Bresil or for his dam line going back four generations. Sincerely, I wish them luck with that project.

In a scenario mirroring the impact of Connell’s announcement, Skelton’s news has had a knock-on effect on Joe Tizzard’s thinking for Alexei. His six-length Greatwood winner has been raised 13lb by the handicapper, meaning he could be following the previous year’s victor Burdett Road to the Christmas Hurdle rather than tomorrow week’s Ladbrokes Hurdle at Ascot.

“The New Lion isn’t going to Kempton, so you’ve got to be tempted,” Tizzard said. “The trouble is Kempton’s entries close the same day as the race at Ascot, so it’s not like we can get a heads-up. They are both very similar prize money.

 “I don’t need to be sensible as he’s already had a cracking season and it’s not like I’m trying to get his head in front. I’ve got the option of having a crack at something. One will be a four- or five-runner race and the other will be a competitive handicap with horses he is giving 20lb to.”

As a broad aside, coming as it with a shrunken high-quality horse population particularly on this side of the Irish Sea, the sport must decide what it wants: competitive graded races or highly rated horses being funnelled towards making household-name handicaps great again. But that’s a discussion for another week.

On this occasion, I will sign off with the aforementioned Alan Potts’ view on the French contingent who could come pot-hunting from France. In short, it’s for the birds.

As discerned from trainer François Nicolle’s comments, Kingland is seen as highly talented but an eventual Gold Cup candidate. His dam Annaland’s best progeny to date was Figuero, whose most effective performances came over three-and-a-half miles and further in France.

Potts makes the point that Kingland is an AQPS horse rather than a full thoroughbred. (Does Marine Le Pen know about this dangerous precedent, happening over there, strengthening their races?)

“It didn’t stop Buveur D’Air, Espoir D'Allen or Epatante from winning the Champion Hurdle in recent times,” Potts noted. “But with one difference – none of those three ever ran over hurdles in France. They were bought off the back of form in AQPS Flat races, so were trained to deal with two-mile pace over here or in Ireland from their novice days onwards.”

As I thought, four-year-old It's Win O’Clock is also unlikely to be winding up over here this season. If we do see him on these shores, it’s more likely to be as a nascent chaser.

Advised 28/11/25: William Munny at 12/1 (10/1 also acceptable) for the Unibet Champion Hurdle

Silence is golden, golden, but my eyes still see… no selection