Best of the rest
The meeting’s novice contests offer surprise upsets, poignant wins and an exciting look at next year’s contenders
More major Festival winners
ASIDE from the winners of the big four races, and with all due respect to Ballymore Novices’ Hurdle winner Samcro, the horses I’d want to take home from this year’s Festival were the victors of the first two races; Summerville Boy, who took the Sky Bet Supreme Novices’ Hurdle, despite doing his best to unseat Noel Fehily at the last two, and the Willie Mullins-trained Footpad.
The latter, the first of seven winners for Mullins, was given a wonderful ride by Ruby Walsh in the Racing Post Arkle Challenge Trophy Novices’ Chase. He sat 15 lengths off Saint Calvados and Petit Mouchoir, who softened each other up in their ding-dong battle to control the race. He might have been on the best horse, but Walsh proved here why he has ridden 23 winners more than any other jockey in Cheltenham’s amphitheatre.
“We had this fella marked down for the JLT Novices’
Chase and we were looking around trying to buy a novice to run over two miles,” said Mullins. “When we ran this one in his first two races, we thought we’ve got the best one in our yard. He might be a Gold Cup horse one day.”
Walsh was equally good on Benie Des Dieux in the OLBG Mares’ Hurdle coming late. Apple’s Jade, the red-hot favourite, was never really going in third and was believed to have been in season.
Benie Des Dieux’s three previous starts for Mullins had all been wins over fences. “She’s a nice mare, a big mare and after her first win I nicknamed her Benie Des Douvan,” said Mullins of the lightly-raced mare. “I don’t know if she’ll be that good but she’s four from four for us.”
Despite early sucess, Walsh’s Festival was dramatically finished by the second race, the RSA Insurance Novices’ Chase on Wednesday, when a fall at the second last re-broke the leg that had kept him out since November.
INEXPERIENCED YET IMPRESSIVE
SUMMERVILLE BOY won the Tolworth Hurdle at Sandown off a fast pace and that, it seems, is the key to the Tom George-trained hurdler, ridden by Noel Fehily. Though Kalashnikov, who was behind him at Sandown but had since won the Betfair Hurdle at Newbury, and the Irish hope Getabird were better fancied here, Summerville Boy would have repeated the Sandown form to the pound had he jumped either of the last two in any sort of fashion.
Instead, he landed so flatfooted at the last that his neckbeating of a horse like Kalashnikov was really rather impressive.
It was a good week for Tom George. Summerville Boy was his first winner at the Festival for 16 years and Black Op was runnerup to Samcro a day later, which means he has the best two novice hurdlers in the country.
Summerville Boy won in an identical time to Buveur D’Air in the Champion Hurdle and he can now potter around the Champion Hurdle trials next season, learning how to jump, before coming back to take on the reigning champion in a year’s time.
“He’s still inexperienced,” said George. “To give Noel his due, when he got beat here early on in the season, he said none of those horses would ever beat him again in a true run race.”
GIGGINSTOWN HORSES PROVE FIRST CLASS
SAMCRO set the ball rolling for Gigginstown owner and Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary’s eventual
seven winners at the Festival. He got the job done in the Ballymore Novices’ Hurdle, but was not streets ahead of Black Op and we will have to wait a little longer before he confirms himself as the second coming.
Bookmakers were offering fancy prices for him for the 2019 Gold Cup, but it was the RSA Chase winner, Presenting Percy, who looks like he will take a hand in next year’s race, particularly given the record of his trainer Pat Kelly — a winner at Cheltenham each of the past three years now — and jockey Davy Russell, whose four winners saw him land the top jockey award for the first time.
MICHAEL O’LEARY’S FESTIVAL ROLL
NO winner gave O’Leary more pleasure than claiming his own Ryanair Chase for the first time in 13 years of sponsorship, when the Henry de Bromhead-trained Balko Des Flos beat Un De Sceaux, whose exuberant frontrunning on the heavy going just caught up with him from the second last.
Variety is the spice of life, and Tiger Roll’s love affair with Cheltenham continued when the eight-year-old, a former winner of the Triumph Hurdle, the Masterson Holdings Hurdle, and the National Hunt Chase, added the Glenfarclas Cross-Country Chase to his list of conquests.
To prove just how good a week it was for O’Leary, he also won the JCB Triumph Hurdle with the Gordon Elliott-trained Farclas.