Horses to follow at Ayr's Scottish Grand National meeting this weekend

GET A TONIC (3.35 Friday)

Last year’s winner Get A Tonic looks to have been saved for a repeat performance off a mark just 4lb higher. Team Skelton may even have been considering loftier aspirations after this mare returned to action at Hadyock in the autumn with a career-best effort when making Botox Has pull out all the stops in the valuable Betfair Exchange (formerly fixed brush) Hurdle.

For whatever reason, Get A Tonic didn’t quite match that level on her next two starts and now finds herself returning to the west coast of Scotland with a point of sorts to prove following her tamest display of the campaign nine weeks ago.

Yet she’d be far from the first horse to bounce straight back from a below-par effort at that Haydock meeting and, given her record fresh, you get the feeling the Skelton firm have been keeping their powder dry to prime her for this mares-only prize.

FRERE D’ARMES (1.15 Saturday)

You see a theme developing, because that man Skelton makes even more a point of targeting the handicaps chases at this meeting. While he has plundered four of the last five editions of Friday’s feature, the 2m Scotty Brand Handicap Chase which kicks off Saturday’s eight-race epic appears his best chance of bagging another of them this year.

The form of Frere D’Armes’ first two victories over fences, in handicaps at Kempton and then Newbury in November, has been franked umpteen times over. The Kempton runner-up Haddex Des Obeaux won his next two starts, rocketing 20lb up the weights, while the third ran out a 16-length winner at the same track a fortnight later.

At Newbury he beat Auchinrisque, who was a one-length runner-up to Boothill in the Wayward Lad and then landed the Betfair Hurdle on his next two outings, and next time-out-winner and subsequent Grade 1 runner-up Balco Coastal.

A nasty cut sustained in that latter victory kept him off the track for four months, but he lost nothing other than his unbeaten record over fences when chasing home Black Gerry at Ascot three weeks ago (replay below). The only horse to serve it up to that prolific winner (landed a valuable race at Plumpton since) until tiring after the last, Frere D’Armes should improve appreciably here with that run under his belt. Solid claims of scooping the race Skelton took in 2019 with the heavily punted Azzuri.

COLONEL MUSTARD (2.25 Saturday)

Trained in Ireland by a Scot, how Lorna Fowler would dearly love to win one of the feature races at the meeting where her late father, Johnny Bradburne, enjoyed the biggest winner of his Corinthian career aboard General Chandos in the 1987 Future Champion Novices’ Chase.

Having drawn stumps on a chasing campaign after just two starts - the second of which saw Colonel Mustard finish a distant runner-up to El Fabiolo at Fairyhouse before Christmas - Fowler almost pulled off a successful raid on Scotland’s richest handicap hurdle, Kelso’s Morebattle Hurdle, on his first run back over timber seven weeks ago, when he finished a two-length second to Benson.

The formbook doesn’t tell the whole story, however, as Fowler’s charge fared much the best of those ridden on the sharp end in a race run at a relentless gallop. As well as Benson, the third, fourth and fifth all flew home from off the pace, strongly suggesting that Colonel Mustard found himself at a notable disadvantage in terms of track position.

With a bank of solid form in top handicaps, including when third to State Man in last season’s County Hurdle, and Graded events as a novice (runner-up and third in Grade 1s at the DRF and Punchestown), he must have every chance of defying a 3lb rise for Kelso and deservedly getting his day in the sun.

MONBEG GENIUS (3.35 Saturday)

Corach Rambler’s Aintree romp further advertised Lucinda Russell’s prowess as a master handler of staying chasers and, in novice Your Own Story, the Perth powerhouse has a leading chance of ‘doubling up’ with what would also be her second Scottish National success.

As the horse I nominated as my Racing TV jumper to follow at the start of the season, I’ll admit to feeling just a wee bit smug should this stout-staying seven-year-old follow in the hoofprints of stable-mate Mighty Thunder (also an intended runner at this stage) from two years ago.

But back to Corach Ramber... and it’s his second consecutive victory in the Ultima Chase at Cheltenham last month which jumps out as the formline to follow for this weekend. Monbeg Genius, who was sent off the well-backed 6/1 favourite that day, was only overhauled on the run from the final fence at the Festival to finish third to the subsequent National hero and a well-touted handicap debutant in Fastorslow.

In simple terms, then, a 5lb rise for finishing within two-and-a-quarter lengths of a horse now rated 13lb higher post-Aintree suggests Monbeg Genius remains on a workable mark.

More than that, he’s open to plenty more progress, having had just five runs over fences so far, and it may well be the move up to marathon distances will see this seven-year-old, who shapes like a strong stayer, take another rise up the ladder following that career-best effort at Cheltenham.

If it does, and if he also manages to negotiate a clean passage for four miles, this Genius might be the horse to give another genius in Jonjo O’Neill a belated first triumph in the Scottish National as a jockey and now a trainer.

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