Ben Linfoot reflects on day one of the Cheltenham Festival and some stunning performances, before looking for spring-ground horses for day two.
Honey monster steals the show
Who tried to get HONEYSUCKLE beaten in the Unibet Champion Hurdle, on account of querying whether she had the pace to cope with a speed test on drying ground?
Hands up, I was one, but speed is clearly something this super mare has in abundance. She tanked through this under Rachael Blackmore, utterly dominating her rivals, the way she pinged the last before bounding clear symbolic of her overall superiority.
This was run in a time two seconds quicker than the Sky Bet Supreme. Last year’s first and second, Epatante and Sharjah, were swatted away by over six lengths and more, in reverse order to a year ago.
Eleven wins from 11 runs, Honeysuckle is getting better and better. She looks quicker the more that she races, she hurdles better the more that she jumps. She’s only seven and, considering she won a speed test on drying ground on Tuesday, it makes you wonder just how many Champion Hurdles she could win?
Safe to say I won’t be taking her on again - and if you throw some testing ground into the mix at future Festivals that will be no problem to her considering what she’s been doing in Ireland in such conditions the last few years.
Henry de Bromhead has done a fantastic job with her. On this evidence she’s still improving. Keeping her sweet and sound will be key if she’s to add to her Cheltenham haul, but this division has been crying out for a 165-plus rated star for a while and it’s finally found one.
One final point - should this freakish success trigger a fresh debate about female sex allowances (horses, quite obviously!)?
Probably not – not yet anyway. Honeysuckle might not have needed hers here and would’ve won if she’d been running off a level playing field with her male counterparts, but she’s the poster girl for the flourishing mares’ programme and to begin the undoing of such great work is unnecessary.
The desire to see the best horses win the best races remains – without help from any weight concessions - and it’s worth keeping an eye on. But there is no doubt the best horse won the Champion Hurdle on Tuesday afternoon. Honeysuckle was simply phenomenal.
Appreciate the interest
Long-term – like, really long-term – ante-post bets have never appealed to me.
Waiting something in the region of 12 months for a punt to land, considering everything that could go wrong for a horse in-between, has always been way down my list of punting preferences and having money tied up with all those good Saturday races to go at has just never felt ideal.
But then you see APPRECIATE IT at between 5/2 and 4/1 for the 2022 Sporting Life Arkle and even those seemingly prohibitive odds are tempting.
A punting friend of mine who loves this type of bet says to treat it like a long-term investment that you’d have if decent interest rates were an actual thing with the bank – with the obvious extra risks that horse racing provides factored in – and this sort of blue sky thinking is on my mind having just witnessed the Willie Mullins-trained beast win the Sky Bet Supreme Novices’ Hurdle by 24 lengths.
Yes, main market rival Metier was hugely disappointing. And you’d be up against it to argue this was a vintage Supreme, which had the smallest field in the race’s history.
But Appreciate It was a league above his seven rivals, he was too classy, too good – and he looks every inch a future steeplechaser in the making.
They went hard here thanks to For Pleasure out in front and Appreciate It did appreciate both the well-run nature of the race and getting a tow into things from the Alex Hales-trained horse.
Talk beforehand was that he looked more of a Champagne Fever-type Supreme horse for Mullins than a Vautour or a Douvan, but he’s not out of place in the latter company now and his pinpoint jumping was a sight to behold.
A proper physical specimen, his fencing career is already eagerly-awaited. And while Mullins said himself he had him down as an Albert Bartlett possible at the start of the season, his post-race reaction following the Supreme that ‘he could be an Arkle horse’ looks spot on.
Those ‘interest rates’ might just be worth weighing up.
Time to look for spring-ground horses
The times suggested the ground was no worse than good to soft on day one and with dry conditions forecast looking for those that can leave their winter form behind on Wednesday might be a sensible ploy.
It could be asking a lot for Chacun Pour Soi to get beat in the Betway Queen Mother Champion Chase, as I don’t think he’ll be inconvenienced by drying conditions, but given he’s very short and has never been to Cheltenham I’m going to have a go at him.
The one I like each-way against him is ROUGE VIF and I’m surprised he’s available at 28s given conditions have turned in his favour.
He was far too good for Nube Negra on good to soft in last year’s Kingmaker and I’m firmly of the opinion he’s the best of last year’s two-mile novice chasers granted that he gets his preferred ground.
Only third in last year’s Arkle behind Put The Kettle On when the ground was soft, he showed what he could do at Cheltenham off a break when he routed his opposition on the Old Course on good conditions at the start of the season.
That seven and a half length romp off a mark of 156 is up there with the best-of-the-rest form away from Chacun Pour Soi, so he appeals at 25s and bigger each-way.
Gavin Sheehan takes the ride on him and he could be set for a good day, so much so I’m backing his mount OUR POWER at 66/1 in the Coral Cup, as well.
This is a bit of a leftfield play, but his owner Dai Walters has won this race a few times and this horse won one of the Kempton consolation races for those that missed the cut in the Festival handicaps this time a year ago – on good to soft ground.
He’s got stuck in the mud a bit on his last few starts, but he looks fairly treated off 135 on the back of those runs and he’s got bits and bobs of promising Cheltenham form.
Sheehan is four from 12 for trainer Nigel Twiston-Davies – and has only been out of the frame in one of those runs – so it’s an eyebrow-raising jockey booking for a young six-year-old that still has more to offer.
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