Tom Stanley: four fancies for the Cheltenham Festival handicaps

For my Festival Lucky 15 I want to put up some horses to follow in the handicaps as we can see the way these races are developing now.

We know the weights, and roughly what's lining up where, so I’ve got a couple of plays on the Tuesday, one on the Wednesday, and another on the last day as well. It’s an obvious one which has been absolutely hammered in the betting, but I want him on-side. 

The first of my four handicap selections comes in the first handicap of the meeting - the Ultima - and the horse I'm keen on is the Kim Bailey-trained Chianti Classico.

This is a horse who had some good hurdles form last season, with his only real disappointment coming in the Albert Bartlett at the Cheltenham Festival.

Chianti Classico ran a good race at Kempton last time, where he was wide throughout under Harry Cobden - it was obviously the plan to keep him as wide as possible.

I thought he was going to go and win his race at one point, but I think he was probably just done by the horse on the inside going the shortest way around and probably having a little bit too much toe for him.

The Kempton run came at the point when Kim Bailey was still having winners but it's been well documented that they then went into a quiet spell after. But Bailey won the Grimthorpe at the weekend with Does He Know, so going into Cheltenham it's a big boost that the yard is back in among the winners.

Chianti Classico has the right sort of profile for the race - you tend to want to play towards the top of the market to be honest. It's a race which - shock horror at the festival - traditionally goes to the Brits, and Chianti Classico is the leading British charge. I there's still a bit of room for improvement in terms of his handicap mark, too. 

For the Boodles, we are very much going Irish - I don't think there's any other way to look in this race - but I'm looking a little further down the list and it's with the JP McManus second string Nara.

Four of the past five winners of this race have come out of the race that Nara ran in last time at Naas - I don't know why it is but has a ridiculous record of finding Boodles winners.

She was patiently ridden, out with Noel Meade's horse out the back for much of the race, and I thought around two out that she was going to come and challenge. She finishes pretty tamely to be honest, but there are reasons to expect better here.

Naas was Nara’s third start, she had one in France and then two in Ireland, and the first of those efforts is a decent bit of form with the second, Kala Conti, winning at Grade Two level since.

It's a slight guessing game, of course, because Nara’s going to need to run a lot better than this to go and take the Boodles, but we know the Naas race seems to be a good guide.

Nara looks to be pretty fairly treated on a mark of 126 coming into this, particularly based upon that first run in France.

I think connections looked to see whether she was a Triumph filly with her Irish debut coming in a Grade Three, where she went off at 11/2, but it appeared she wasn't, so I think they have given her another run and then aimed her at the Boodles. I think she is interesting at a chunky price. 

There were two horses I wanted to mention for this; one was Doddiethegreat, but I'm not sure he's going to get in, so Might I is the one to focus on. This horse has bumped into some top horses in the past, the likes of Three Stripe Life (who he was second to in a Grade One at Aintree), Jonbon and Constitution Hill.

Might I ran off 145 in the Martin Pipe at Cheltenham last year, which is 3lb higher than the 142 that he lines up off in the Coral Cup, and he was a bit tight for room up the nearside rail that day.

I don't think that's an obvious excuse and I came away from this thinking that he didn't stay the two miles four and a half furlongs on the New Course, but if he didn't stay would have finished eighth rather than the staying-on fourth he managed. We know it's good form and he has a nice turn around in the weights with No Ordinary Joe.

Might I was originally considered for going back to the Martin Pipe, but I quite like that connections have plumped for this race which tends to not have the same number of young, completely unexposed novice hot pots. In fact, the Coral Cup has never been won by a first season hurdler (thanks to Matt Toombs for that stat) so you know he fits the bill pretty well.

I think Might I is potentially a little soft - his chase career just didn't take off as he didn't love the fences – but I’m looking forward to seeing him back in a handicap hurdle. I have this slight niggling doubt at the trip, but I think it's definitely worth putting some money behind him to try and find out.  

And then there's the obvious one. Quai De Bourbon has been hammered, absolutely hammered in the market for the Martin Pipe.

What can I tell you about him? He's had two goes so far, he's looked pretty good on each of them, but I thought the most interesting thing was at Clonmel last time where he came dramatically back in trip, when it was suggested that he was a proper stayer.

Quai De Bourbon was given an entry at Warwick by Willie Mullins, which I'm sure was just to see what sort of rating he was given so that connections could see which race to go for. His 140 rating means he can get in the Martin Pipe and he's obviously being aimed at that because he's been really well supported.

He’s about 4/1 favourite as I type, but he has been my radar since it was flagged up to me by my colleague, Josh Stacey ,  he had been given that entry into a UK handicap hurdle.

Quai De Bourbon will be racing back over further, but, because he definitely found the two miles too sharp at Clonmel last time, the genius of that is that he wasn't going to win too far and his mark is slightly protected. It was never going to suit him ideally. 

Essentially, Quai De Bourbon is just one of those "could be anything horses", the type of future stayer who tend to take the Martin Pipe and go on to bigger and better things over that intermediate trip up to three miles. He's been well found in the market, but he's a handicapper I definitely want on-side.