Il Etait Temps - favourite for the Betfair Tingle Creek

Betfair Tingle Creek: The case for Il Etait Temps

By David Ord

Horse Racing

Wed December 03, 2025 · 2w ago

David Ord makes the case for Il Etait Temps going into Saturday's Betfair Tingle Creek Chase at Sandown.

A day after the HWPA Awards, you tend to give yourself an easy task or two.

Make the case for Il Etait Temps in the Betfair Tingle Creek Chase you ask? Well he’s odds-on, two pounds clear on Timeform ratings, his career best performance came over course-and-distance in the spring and if the rain does arrive, he's perfectly at home in testing conditions too.

Done. Now pass me the Christmas After Eights.

Well it's not quite that simple is it.

After all Jonbon’s in here, he’s won 13 of his 18 races including this very race for the last two seasons. His peak Timeform performance rating 181+ is exactly the same figure as Il Etait Temps reached when beating him in the Celebration Chase here in April.

But the Irish raider has the younger legs, is potentially on the upgrade and right at the top of his game. Jonbon is also in Sunday's Sky Bet Peterborough Chase.

Il Etait Temps' two defeats over fences to date both came at the hooves of Gaelic Warrior at Limerick over Christmas 2023 and in the Arkle the following spring.

As he plugged on into third after a couple of mistakes that day, there was little sense that he was the potential Grade One two-mile crackerjack in the race.

But that journey began the following month with victories at Aintree and Punchestown.

A setback last autumn looked to have ruled him out for the season but as the Mullins battalion peppered Britain in the spring in the pursuit of a second trainers’ title, he was off the treatment table and brilliant in Esher.

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You’re not going to read too much into his Clonmel Oil Chase cruise on his return other to than to point out as he hit the line hard held and 18 lengths clear of Senecia, he was producing a Timeform performance rating of 179+.

These are meaty numbers. Of all the runners in the field on Saturday he looks the most likely to run to his very best – and if he does – he wins.

I remember on the Jockey Club trip to Mullins’ in February, we were all huddled around the great man outside Galopin Des Champs’ box getting the lowdown on who was heading across the Irish Sea in the next month or so.

Il Etait Temps’ name wasn’t on the list but he manged to make an impression, noisily crying out, shaking his head back and forth. Mullins broke off mid-sentence on Kopek Des Bordes and smiled.

“He’s trying to tell us something,” he said pointing two doors down.

The message landed loud and clear at Sandown in April. And is all set to do so again on Saturday.

Il Etait Temps, the best two-mile chaser in training, is heading to the Tingle Creek all guns blazing. Let’s see how high he can fly.