Jonbon fails to fire in Warwick win but Nicky Henderson ‘looks on bright side’
A week after Ireland paraded its strength at the Dublin Racing Festival, and three days after home stables accounted for barely a third of the Grand National entries, British jumping was hoping for something to look forward to at Cheltenham next month in the Festival trials at Newbury and Warwick on Saturday.
By the end of the afternoon, however, Jonbon, one of the few Britishtrained favourites for a Grade One at next month’s meeting, had been replaced as market leader for the Arkle Trophy after an unconvincing success at Warwick at odds of 1-16.
The two Grade Two events at Newbury, meanwhile, both went to relative outsiders, including Zanza, the Denman Chase winner, who is very much a course specialist. Greaneteen, among the pick of the British twomile chasers, was beaten at 1-2 behind Funambule Sivola in the Game Spirit Chase, and Aucunrisque’s one-length defeat of Filey Bay in the Betfair Hurdle was one of very few crumbs of comfort for British jumping ahead of next month’s showpiece meeting in the west country.
Chris Gordon’s seven-year-old had spent the first four months of the season racing over fences but he was soon skipping over the smaller obstacles as Nick Schofield set off to make the running. Filey Bay, whose Irish trainer, Emmet Mullins, counts last year’s Grand National among his big-race wins, moved smoothly into contention halfway down the home straight, but the 4-1 favourite was clumsy at the second-last and could never quite get to Aucunrisque, who held a length advantage at the line.
“He’s a wonderful, tough and consistent horse,” Gordon said. “He is owned by the guvnor [Julian Head], who sponsors half my yard, so I will probably take him into the bar and try to sell him another horse. He has fallen for that too many times.”
Zanza is such a confirmed coursespecialist that he is not entered at Cheltenham next month, though his win in the Denman Chase was notable for being the 3,000th success of Philip Hobbs’s 38-year training career.
Johnson White, the long-serving assistant at his Minehead stable, will be added to the licence at the stable over the next few months, but Hobbs himself has no plans to retire as yet.
“It is extraordinary how this horse is so much better here than anywhere else,” Hobbs said. “I’ve never had a horse to that extent. He’s only been beaten once here, which was the Betfair Hurdle, and he was only beaten about three lengths.
“The 3,000 has been a bit slow coming in the last few weeks, but we got there eventually. It has taken us a long while to do it.”
Jonbon’s unbeaten record over fences remains intact after his third success of the campaign in the Grade Two Kingmaker Novice Chase at Warwick, but the long odds-on favourite, who was left with just one rival, Calico, to beat after two potential runners were ruled out on Saturday morning, was far from convincing in his five-and-a-half length victory.
Calico went three lengths clear of Jonbon going down the back and it was only after the last that Aidan Coleman’s mount finally put the race to bed.
El Fabiolo, a Grade One winner in Ireland last weekend, is the new favourite for the Arkle Trophy at around 5-4 (from 7-4) while Jonbon is out to 2-1 in a place (from 11-8).
“I’m going to look on the bright side,” Nicky Henderson, Jonbon’s trainer, said at Newbury. “Because he’s had such easy races, I think he got taken by surprise when the other horse attacked him. It will do him no harm as he hasn’t had a [real] race since Aintree last year.”