Our Duke to foil clean sweep for Henderson
Irish chaser can conquer Might Bite in Gold Cup House guest Harrington to claim big race again
Nicky Henderson stands on the brink of possibly the single biggest achievement of a career which spans 40 years and 60 Festival winners. Should Might Bite win today’s Timico Gold Cup, it will give the Lambourn trainer an unprecedented clean sweep of Cheltenham’s big three races.
Buveur D’air (Champion Hurdle) and Altior (Champion Chase) both found ways to win difficult races and, on ground which may be softer than his optimum, Might Bite, the King George winner, may have to do the same.
But if he can repeat his dramatic RSA Chase win of last year without any of the stunts – namely taking a right turn to the paddock after jumping the last – then it might once again be his race to lose.
Henderson has taken care this season with the nine-year-old owned by the Knot Again Partnership, an amalgam of his old friends, headed by Kent County Cricket Club chairman Simon Phillip.
Might Bite landed the big midwinter championship, the King George at Kempton, but, in a way, the victory put his elevation to greatness on hold. He could never quite shake off Double Shuffle or Tea For Two, winning by a length, albeit without ever looking like he would surrender victory.
Phillip will, no doubt, confirm that winning a five-day Test match by a single run is enough. But Might Bite’s victory was unconvincing and it did not confirm him as head and shoulders better than any other chaser in the land. While there was a weight of expectation on his two stable companions this week, that is not the case with Might Bite and it gives today’s race an open look.
Killultagh Vic would have come into the race with a profile very similar to last year’s winner, Sizing John, had he not taken a heavy fall at the last in the Irish Gold Cup. At the time, he looked ready to continue a winning run, interrupted only by injury, going back to the Martin Pipe Hurdle here in 2015.
His 17 rivals will not hang around waiting for his confidence to return over the fences today.
This is a bogey race for his trainer, Willie Mullins, who has been second six times. He also runs the Hennessy winner, Total Recall, who needs to improve again, but that may be possible, as well as Bachasson and out-of-form Djakadam.
Joseph O’brien’s “miracle” horse, Edwulf, picked up the pieces when the Irish Gold Cup fell apart late on. Last year here, he collapsed on the run-in and was down for an hour at the end of the National Hunt Chase but he and Minella Rocco, also carrying the JP Mcmanus colours, should be doing their best late on.
It would be slightly ironic if, at the end of a topsy-turvy season, Colin Tizzard won the Gold Cup. Native River, a Hennessy and Welsh National winner, was third last year and is an out-and-out galloper but, apart from Kauto Star when he won his second, every Gold Cup since 2004 has been won by a horse running in it for the first time.
Might Bite’s victory in the King George was unconvincing, and put elevation to greatness on hold
Since January, I have been toying with the idea of going for Definitly Red, more so since the snow and rain came. His trainer, Brian Ellison, has always regarded him as a Gold Cup horse and his win here in January puts him in the mix. He is a big each-way chance but I wonder if he quite has the class to win a Gold Cup.
However, if selecting the winner is purely a clinical exercise in form, a straight slide-rule calculation of weights and distance – sometimes it is, quite often it is not – then Henderson and Might Bite can be denied today by what he might jokingly consider the enemy within; his house guest this week, Jessica Harrington, and her Irish National winner Our Duke.
Harrington, who won the race 12 months ago with Sizing John, can keep her 100 per cent record in the race. She has not had an easy run with the eight-year-old since he won the Irish National last April but she appeared to have him back on track when he beat Presenting Percy, the seven-length winner of Wednesday’s RSA Chase, giving him 7lb in the Red Mills Chase at Gowran a month ago.
At Cheltenham these days, you can dine on lobster, beef or salmon cooked by celebrity chefs but is that not the punter’s comfort food of choice; form on a plate?