Even the mud cannot stop unbeaten Altior
RACING
The jump season has been stymied into December by a lack of rain and when it arrived, in horizontal squalls which sent bookmakers’ umbrellas cart- wheeling across the ring at Sandown yesterday, Altior and Un De Sceaux duly served up a Betfair Tingle Creek for the ages.
Some champions do not like getting their feet muddy and heavy ground, opened up by the heavy rain, was new territory for Altior, unbeaten in nine starts over fences before this race.
But every time the mudlark, Un De Sceaux, and master tactician, Ruby Walsh, tried to ask a question of Nicky Henderson’s eight-year-old in the last mile, Altior always had an answer and, though the pair were in the air together at the last three fences, the reigning champion just had too much class for his game Irish opponent and ran out a four-length winner up the hill.
Even Henderson reckoned it was one of Altior’s finest performances. “It’s a relief,” admitted the trainer. “We’ve always ummed and ahhed about soft ground with him but that was proper hard-work ground and Ruby made it tough for him but he couldn’t make it tough enough.”
He added that though Altior has been left in the King George on Boxing Day, if he goes to Kempton it will more than likely be for the Desert Orchid. “I’ve always said the King’s Stand is more likely than the King George,” he joked. “There’s only one race we want and that’s the Champion Chase and we can come back here for the Celebration Chase at the end of the season if we don’t go to Aintree.”
His jockey, Nico de Boinville, said: “Ruby really went out and made that a Championship gallop – all credit to Un De Sceaux for keeping going after the gallop he set and he’s been round for a long time. But ultimately it set it up for Altior and his finishing kick.
“He made a small mistake at the first ditch which woke him up a bit and I was pleased that he danced over the next. He felt fantastic. That was a good gallop on good ground let alone the heavy but I was always happy tracking Un De Sceaux and once we’d jumped the Railway fences I was very happy. When he gets to another horse’s girth he goes – great champions do that.”
Walsh said: “He ran his heart out and ran super but I’ve never been a great loser and I ain’t any better now.”
Earlier in the novice equivalent, the Randoxhealth.com Henry VIII Novice Chase, the Paul Nicholls-trained Dynamite Dollars reversed the Cheltenham November form with Lalor when he collared Henry de Bromhead’s exciting front-running Ornua halfway up the run-in to win by a length and three quarters with Lalor back in third.
Nicholls will now aim the winner at Kempton’s Wayward Lad Novice Chase just after Christmas.
At Aintree, the 2017 Grand National winner, One For Arthur, only got as far as the third on his comeback before all but falling and unseating Tom Scudamore in the Betway Many Clouds Chase. The race went to the odds-on favourite Definitly Red.
The Becher Chase, over the Grand National fences, was won by the Robert Walford-trained Walk In The Mill, owned by Baroness Dido Harding.