Cheltenham’s Trials card on Saturday, due to be the final action at the track before the Festival meeting in March, is in serious doubt due to waterlogging after 45mm of rain at the course since Tuesday, with an inspection of the course scheduled for 2pm on Friday.
Paisley Park, the hugely popular 2019 Stayers’ Hurdle winner, and the former Gold Cup winner Native River were among the big names expected to line up on Saturday’s seven-race card, which includes four Grade Two contests and a competitive Grade Three handicap. The course also lost its New Year’s Day fixture earlier this month, and has not been forced to abandon both its January cards since 1996.
Announcing Friday’s inspection on Twitter, the track said that the going is currently “heavy, with standing water in places” and “more rain forecast”.
Clerk of the course Simon Claisse said on Thursday morning: “The ground is currently heavy, having had 15mm of rain overnight and 30 for the week so far, which exceeded what we thought we’d get before racing.
“We’re just about raceable at the moment, if we took a few fences out, but the forecast – upon which we made the judgment call this morning to hold a precautionary inspection tomorrow – has subsequently got worse.
“My levels of optimism are declining, but there’s always hope. We need less rain to fall than is forecast – what happens through the night will be key as to where we end up.”
Thursday’s meeting at Wetherby became the latest British fixture to fall to the weather when it failed to pass an inspection this morning, but Fakenham’s card got the go-ahead and will be the first jumps meeting in Britain since Monday.
The main jumping action, however, is in Ireland, where the Thyestes Handicap Chase, one of the season’s most popular betting heats, is due off at 3.25. A field of 17 is due to go to post, including five saddled by Willie Mullins and another four from Gordon Elliott’s stable, as the two perennial rivals slug it out again for Ireland’s trainers’ title.
The Grade Two Galmoy Hurdle will also be in Mullins’s sights after a Grade Two double at Thurles on Wednesday, with last year’s Cesarewitch Handicap winner, Great White Shark, heading the market at 2-1. The seven-year-old is currently a 25-1 shot for the Stayers’ Hurdle in March.
Golden Whisky (1.55) and Midnight Glance (3.35) should both go well at Fakenham, while at Southwell, spare a thought for the owners of Marwari (4.25) and Daafr (2.15), two horses who seem to have found their calling on the Fibresand just as Arena Racecourse Company is preparing to rip it up.
Quick Guide
Greg Wood’s Thursday tips
Fakenham 12.53 Imperial Nemesis 1.23 Tonyx 1.55 Golden Whisky 2.28 Shantung 3.00 Barden Bella 3.35 Midnight Glance 4.05 Madera Mist
Southwell 1.10 Gabrial The Devil 1.40 Whittle Le Woods 2.15 Daafr (nb) 2.45 Fabilis 3.20 Bay Of Naples 3.55 Ornate 4.25 Marwari (nap)
Newcastle 3.40 Ad Libitum 4.12 Greengage 4.50 Van Dijk 5.25 Western Symphony 6.00 Baronial Pride 6.30 Babajan 7.00 Bobby Joe Leg 7.30 Sharrabang
Townend facing tricky Cheltenham choices
Paul Townend seems likely to have two more tricky decisions to make before the Cheltenham Festival in seven weeks’ time after Colreevy and Allaho completed a Grade Two double for Willie Mullins at Thurles on Wednesday. Both horses started at odds-on, both were comfortable winners at the line and both then joined or replaced a stable companion at the top of the betting for a Grade One at the Festival.
Colreevy is the new 9-2 favourite for the first running of the Mares’ Chase on 19 March, replacing Benie Des Dieux (5-1), after winning a mares’ novice chase by 12 lengths in little more than a canter. The third-favourite for the same race, is another Mullins-trained runner in Elimay, who ran Allaho to three lengths half an hour later and briefly looked a significant danger to the 10-11 favourite.
Allaho joined Min, last year’s Ryanair Chase winner, as 6-1 joint-favourite for this season’s renewal after finally adding another win over fences to his success in a beginners’ event in January 2020.
Min was one of the five winners for Townend at last year’s Festival when he edged out the now-retired Barry Geraghty and take the prize for the meeting’s top rider for the first time. It would be no surprise to see Townend end up aboard Allaho, however, as the seven-year-old should still be open to plenty of improvement.
Quick Guide
Basilica takes top honours
“We’ve a much more congested pecking order this year,” Mark Bird, Ireland’s senior handicapper for two-year-olds, told Wednesday’s BHA press conference to reveal the juvenile classification for 2020, which was a polite way to say that after two seasons with an outstanding two-year-old colt, the latest generation does not – as yet – have an obvious champion.
St Mark’s Basilica, the Dewhurst Stakes winner, was 2020’s best two-year-old colt, but a mark of 120 is a long way behind the ratings of Pinatubo (128) and Too Darn Hot (126) in 2019 and 2018 respectively.
“Aidan O’Brien has had 11 champion two-year-old colts,” Bird said on Wednesday, “and this one would rank 10th among them. We’ve also had 43 overall champions since the Classification began in the 1970s and this horse would rank equal 40th.”
O’Brien told the press conference that St Mark’s Basilica is expected to make his three-year-old debut in the 2,000 Guineas at Newmarket in May, while High Definition (115), the 7-1 favourite for the Derby after coming from a long way off the pace to win the Group Two Beresford Stakes, could bypass the first colts’ Classic and run instead in a Derby trial.
“At the moment, he would probably be a shorter price to go to a Derby trial,” O’Brien said. “The Guineas is a great trial for the Derby but we have other horses there for that and he would only have one run before the Derby.”
The top British-trained juvenile was Clive Cox’s Supremacy (118), the Middle Park Stakes winner, while Sealiway (115), the Prix Jean-Luc Lagardere winner, was the leading two-year-old in France.
There was a three-way tie for the title of 2020’s champion juvenile filly, with Wesley Ward’s Royal Ascot and Prix Morny winner Campanelle (113) sharing top spot with Pretty Gorgeous and Shale, trained by Aidan O’Brien’s sons Joseph and Donnacha, respectively. Greg Wood
