Donn McClean on Irish team at Aintree
Donn McClean assesses the Irish team for the opening day of the Randox Health Grand National Festival - and he has a fancy in the very first race.
The thing about Aintree is, it creeps up on you a bit. All season you are thinking Gold Cup and Champion Hurdle more than Betway Bowl and Aintree Hurdle. Then, suddenly, Cheltenham leaves and, just a few weeks later – three this year, not four – Aintree arrives.
It’s some day at Aintree today too, Day One. It’s an intriguing Betway Bowl for starters. We don’t have the winner or the runner-up from the Magners Cheltenham Gold Cup, but we have the third and the fifth and the sixth and the one who unseated at the first.
Kemboy has unfinished business with this season. We have no idea how Willie Mullins’ horse would have fared in the Cheltenham Gold Cup, of course, had he not unseated at the first obstacle. It was a strange unseat too. It was all a little tight on the inside on the run to the first, and it seemed that he just wasn’t able to recover his equilibrium after jumping the fence. There wasn’t much his rider could have done.
So we are back where we were with Kemboy before the Cheltenham Gold Cup. We don’t have any additional evidence. He remains a progressive young steeplechaser who could still go higher. Winner of a Grade 3 chase at Limerick last April, the Supreme Racing Club’s horse looked very good in winning a good novices’ handicap chase at the Punchestown Festival two weeks later.
He beat Alpha Des Obeaux in the Grade 2 Clonmel Oil Chase on his debut this season and then, after missing the Ladbrokes Trophy at Newbury, he danced in in the Grade 1 Savills Chase at Leopardstown over Christmas.
True, he was the beneficiary of an astute ride from David Mullins that day. The early pace was not strong, and Mullins allowed his horse ease to the front before continuing to set that sedate pace. Then he quickened from the final fence, leaving high-class chasers Monalee and Bellshill and Road To Respect – who, admittedly, had had a turbulent passage through the race – in his wake.
There is a chance that he was flattered by the margin of victory – seven and a half lengths – given how the race was run, but there is also a chance that he wasn’t. We don’t know that he wouldn’t have run out an impressive winner if the race had been run at a stronger pace.
We do know that he is a highly talented and progressive young chaser who comes into the race a relatively fresh horse. He has effectively run just twice this season, and he was spared a hard race at Cheltenham. Also, there is a chance that three miles and one furlong at Aintree, a left-handed flat track, will suit him better than three miles and two and a half furlongs at Cheltenham, where his record now reads 54U. And he will have Ruby Walsh for company today. He is short enough now, but he should run a big race.
It might be worthwhile taking a chance on Mengli Khan in the curtain-raiser, the Devenish Manifesto Chase. Gordon Elliott’s horse ran a big race last time when he finished third behind Defi Du Seuil and Lostintranslation in the JLT Chase at Cheltenham.
He travelled really well through his race that day. He ranged up on the outside of Lostintranslation as they ran around the home turn, but he just wasn’t as strong as his two rivals up the hill.
He won well over a mile and three furlongs on the flat when he was with Hugo Palmer, and it is interesting that Gordon Elliott and Gigginstown House are running him here, in the Manifesto Chase over two and a half miles, instead of dropping him back down to two miles for the Maghull Chase on Saturday, in which they are not represented. There is every chance that Mengli Khan will improve over two and a half miles for the move to Aintree today, to the flatter track.
He was a classy novice hurdler last season. He won the Grade 3 For Auction Hurdle and he beat Early Doors and Hardline and Le Richebourg in the Grade 1 Royal Bond Hurdle, and he finished third in the Supreme Novices’ Hurdle. Also, he looked very good in winning his beginners’ chase at his first attempt at Punchestown in November.
He was beaten in the two Grade 1 two-mile novice chases at Leopardstown during the winter, but his run in the JLT Chase was much more like it. He is only six and that was just his fourth chase and, if he can improve just a little on his Cheltenham run, that could take him close.
For more of Donn's work visit www.donnmcclean.com
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