King George and Christmas Hurdle analysis: The Timeform view

I’m pleased we were able to enjoy such a thrilling Ladbrokes King George VI Chase but when it comes to analysing it, you have to say it was a very muddling race.

Put it this way, I think you could run it five times at a similar pace and get possibly five different winners. I don’t tend to like that in my championship races but having said that, they were all top-class horses fighting out the finish with four in line jumping the last.

I’m sure they were all somewhere near the top of their ability on the day too but I just feel if you’re a connection of a beaten horse or backed one of the next three home, then you might well have been thinking there was a hard-luck story somewhere and you’d love to have another crack at it.

That’s unusual for a Grade One but to put some numbers on it The Jukebox Man is now 167p with Timeform. Banbridge 167, Gaelic Warrior is still rated above that pair on 170 and Jango Baie is on 166.

We’ve left Fact To File on 170 but he obviously has a bit to prove now. He’s only won once from six starts since landing last season’s John Durkan. He’s always had a huge reputation, and there are a couple of performances, notably in last season’s Ryanair, where he’s looked a world-beater.

But the number of defeats is just creeping up now. I wonder if he was the one to have been affected by the hard race he and Gaelic Warrior had in this year's John Durkan on their reappearances. That might have left a mark more than it did on his stablemate although having said that he wasn’t in the ideal position when the race really began to take shape either.

The horse who was – and throughout the race too – was The Jukebox Man and big credit for that goes to Ben Jones who sat just off Il Est Francais which meant he didn’t have to get out from behind him when that rival started to fall away.

That happened a little to Gaelic Warrior and while the jockey gets plenty of praise, so too does The Jukebox Man who barely touched a twig on the way around there. That jumping will stand him in good stead in the other big races to come while he showed a lot of courage and gumption to pull it out of the fire late on having briefly dropped to third on the run-in.

Don't forget he was up against three horses in that finish who were all Grade One winners at two miles and he's very much been a stayer from early on his career, that reflects very well on him. That’s why he still has the p.

Paul Townend briefly seemed to get unbalanced on Gaelic Warrior on the run-in, and without making a bad mistake Jango Baie didn’t land running at the second last. They’re small things but in a race like this when they’re all bunched up on the home turn, those small things become big things.

So it was all a bit messy but the horses involved in the finish are all top-class performers and you can make a case for several of them for the big races at Cheltenham in March.

Gino posts career-best figure

And clearly that’s the case now too with Sir Gino, winner of the Ladbrokes Christmas Hurdle and favourite for the Unibet Champion Hurdle at Cheltenham.

He actually posted his best Timeform performance at Kempton – he’s up to 163p and the only horse who’s been out this season who’s rated above him in the two-mile hurdling division is a certain Constitution Hill, who is on 166x but goodness knows if he’ll A) be able to run to that again, B) manage to complete, or C) whether we’ll even see him hurdling again.

Sir Gino has been there twice as a replacement for him in Grade One hurdles and won both. We wrote a piece on Sporting Life last week about chasers going back hurdling and the fact there's a different technique involved.

He looks like a chaser, has the build of a chaser and even when he’s jumping well over hurdles he’s more like a chaser doing it but the key thing to take out of the race is that they just couldn’t go quick enough for him and he looked in a league of his own from a very early stage.

He just wanted to go quicker than the rest and may prove a similar case to another former Christmas Hurdle winner in Faugheen who was also bought to be a chaser, coming as he did from a point-to-point background.

Unusually for a top-class two-mile hurdler, Faugheen never used to jump particularly well. He’d often flatten one on the way round and while Sir Gino is a much better jumper than he was, I just wonder if he’s another case of a horse who is just too good, who has so much ability that he won’t need to be a traditional slick jumping, champion hurdler to win at Cheltenham in what might be a sub-standard year.

If you look at Golden Ace, for all she’s been lucky to win her two recent Grade Ones, she’s still among the top six two-mile hurdlers around and he’s seen her off with ease.

He’s definitely the one to beat in that division and it was great to se him back with all the old ability still intact after such a major health scare in the spring.

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