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| Festival Fever - Champagne Fever can enhance his fine festival record in the Champion Chase. |
No championship race though is perhaps more intriguing than the Champion Chase which will see the last two winners finally lock horns properly after both returning from lengthy absences.
Throw in to the mix a couple of young upstarts from the mighty Paul Nicholls as well as a horse campaigned over further this term but now dropping back to a trip he has a second to none festival record over and you have all the ingredients for an explosive showdown.
For many though the race revolves around whether Sprinter Sacre and Sire De Grugy are still the forces of old.
It’s been argued that the former could only turn up at a fraction of his former ability and still win; such was his dominance over this division two years ago. However that same argument was given before his comeback defeat at Ascot in the Clarence House and though off a lay-off of so long I personally thought that was a good run many were understandably, but unrealistically, disappointed he wasn’t at his brilliant best.
Nicky Henderson maintains he’s improved and is showing flashes of his old majesty in his home work but there’s that nagging doubt that he’s just not the force of old and although if he is back to his best and he wins by a distance we’ll all be asking how we let him go off at 3/1, on the back off just that one run where he didn’t show that exuberance we’ve all come to know and love he’s a really tough horse to weigh up for this.
I would love nothing more than to see him absolutely annihilate this field in the same manner he did in 2013 but I can bask in that should it happen without him carrying my money at a price that is short enough considering.
Sire De Grugy on the other hand looked right back to his best last time out, dismantling and admittedly poor field off a huge weight at Chepstow.
His numerous supporters must have been thrilled to see that after his laboured return in the Game Spirit in which he never looked happy and was already well beaten before he made the two blunders in the straight, the second of which saw him part ways with jockey Jamie Moore.
Last season’s all-conquering champion chaser is a horse I’ve never really warmed to, my own personal opinion of course, and though you can’t knock his achievements on paper, for me he was a placeholder last season until Sprinter Sacre came back.
Now of course the Sprinter Sacre that brushed aside all before him may never truly come back, in which case this could be Sire De Grugy’s chance to finally properly defeat the horse he’s probably unfairly always been compared to.
He’s going to have had three quick runs in a matter of weeks though off the back of a decent spell on the sidelines and although he seemed to thrive with racing last season there’s a worry they may have taken the edge off him.
He was a good winner of all the big two mile chases last season but the cynic in me can’t help but feel he was holding court over a division that had been left decimated by deserters running scared of Sprinter Sacre.
Right place, right time is unfair as he was only beating what was put in front of him last season but the calibre of opposition he is set to face in this year’s Champion Chase looks far superior to this time twelve months ago.
I’m prepared to be wrong and could very well be, as you couldn’t fail to have been impressed by that Chepstow effort but at just 7/2 now he’s not for me when you consider he was practically that price last year against far weaker opposition.
Like Sire De Grugy last season Dodging Bullets has been a revelation this season and has landed, like Sire De Grugy did last year, the two major stepping stones to the Champion Chase in the Tingle Creek and the Clarence House.
It looked a decent Tingle Creek and obviously that Clarence House win came over Sprinter Sacre so it could be argued that really this horse should be favourite, so the fact he’s as big as 5/1 could be value.
Paul Nicholls has worked wonders with him but he’s previously been to three festivals and never hit the board and until that Clarence House win (still only on the 17th January) he’d never won in the latter half of the season.
He has won at Cheltenham before though and his festival efforts have not always been absolute stinkers, he’s improving, is the horse to beat on this season’s form and deserves more respect than he’s getting but I actually prefer his stable mate at the prices.
I’m a sucker for a rogue and though Mr Mole has looked reformed to some extent this season and been another revelation for the Nicholls team, his antics at the start of the Game Spirit where he gave the rest of the field a good ten lengths or so before deciding to start racing, proved that he’s not been completely cured of his eccentricities.
The fact he did that at the start though and still travelled so strongly through a race that to my eye he had won before Sire De Grugy and Uxizandre decided to start clouting fences shows what an engine and high cruising speed this horse has.
He’s always been a talking horse given the JP McManus-Paul Nicholls hook up but until this year he’d been a thoroughly frustrating animal in spite of clearly having an abundance of talent.
Sulking and throwing races away are not ways to endear yourself to the betting public or your connections but the master Paul Nicholls has done great work with Mr Mole to at least reform him in to something resembling a horse that can be backed, if not fixing him completely.
He’s now showing the ability we all knew he had and with regular pilot Tony McCoy having now seemed to have got the hang of him they are a potent force for any race.
Those nagging doubts about his temperament will keep me from putting him up here though because if he decides to act the fool at the start again and give up precious ground his chance will be gone and it would take an effort of Herculean proportions to get back in to the mix.
10/1 NRNB looks big however and if he gets away without incident he could spring a shock, his constitution for a battle up the hill has to still be questioned though and as much as I’m a fan there’s still too many risks that come along with him to be putting him up as a confident selection in a race of this calibre.
Of the realistic winners that only leaves one horse and that is festival perennial Champagne Fever.
Many including myself suspected he’d be contesting the Gold Cup if anything at this year’s festival and when it was announced he was going for the King George as his mid-season target that looked likely to be the case.
However in spite of travelling well for a long way he blatantly didn’t get home over the three miles and faded in to fourth having looked Silviniaco Conti’s biggest danger for most of the race.
Following the King George both the Ryanair and this race were touted as his potential festival target, but given his fine record over the minimum trip at the festival and the more prestigious nature of this race many assumed he’d be trying to make all round Prestbury Park yet again, which looks to be the case.
At the last three festivals he’s won the Bumper, a red-hot Supreme and been beaten the narrowest of distances in the Arkle. That record is incomparable and festival form counts for so much these days, barring that inexplicable loss to Western Warhorse last year in which he was the winner at every point in the race but the line, he’d be coming in to this race three out of three at the festival with all those wins coming over this trip.
His jumping can sometimes be sketchy and a fall the time before last proves that he’s not rid his game of such errors entirely. He’s also had an extremely unconventional prep for this race which is not ideal.
However he is a class horse, seems to come alive at the festival and crucially comes here healthy, though there are question marks over perhaps what trip he should be running over there are none about the level of ability he retains.
I think it’s safe to say he’s widely expected to make a bold bid from the front again and basically say “catch me if you can” and I can see him bowling along and just not getting caught; that was the theory last year too mind you and look what happened there.
When there are doubts over the well being of the two market leaders though it makes sense to put them to sword and expose any cracks in their armour.
Champagne Fever may not be able to make all and hold on up the hill against a field like this, but I can’t see all of his main market rivals getting past him, in which case he looks a lock for a place at worst.
As such he looks a great each-way bet to practically nothing, because if ever there was a year in which a horse with an unconventional prep was going to be able to win the Champion Chase it’s a year in which three of his four main rivals have some serious questions to answer coming in to the race.
Recommendation:
Champagne Fever 0.5pt each-way @ 6/1 (Paddy Power, William Hill) [NRNB]
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