Saturday racing comment | Nicky Henderson deserves praise for handling miserable March so well as Jonbon's Sandown success proves
By Ben Linfoot
14:53 · SUN April 28, 2024
Our Ben Linfoot reflects on the final Grade 1 of the National Hunt season going to Nicky Henderson's Jonbon after a stirring renewal of the bet365 Celebration Chase.
The bet365 Celebration Chase at Sandown was born following a Cheltenham Festival crisis and on Saturday Nicky Henderson won the race for a record-equalling seventh time six weeks on from his own Prestbury Park pickle.
After foot-and-mouth cancelled the 2001 Cheltenham Festival the Celebration Chase was born, in effect to replace that year’s Champion Chase, and it has developed into a final day of season highlight not to be missed; certainly, the 2024 edition promised to be one such race. It delivered.
On the one hand you had El Fabiolo, on his own retrieval mission following a most disappointing display in the Queen Mother Champion Chase at Cheltenham, master trainer Willie Mullins, in town to seal and lift his first UK trainer’s championship trophy, confident his two-mile star could rediscover his A-game.
And on the other you had the mercurial Jonbon, capable of defeat at 1/4 at Cheltenham in January (when beaten by a horse in Elixir De Nutz who was sent off at 66/1 today), but also capable of great things, like his Melling Chase victory just over a fortnight ago.
Jonbon soars over the last at Sandown
You sense Jonbon is the sort of character Nicky Henderson enjoys training, but there was no smile etched into the face of the watery-eyed chief of Seven Barrows at Cheltenham on March 13, when this horse was withdrawn from the Champion Chase thanks to an unusual reason on the self-certificate – ‘stable’s runners under a cloud’ – wording that was agreed upon by the stewards.
Henderson had never had a March like it. Two winners from 31 runners at a strike-rate of six per cent. No Cheltenham Festival winners, a meeting that usually ensures him at least £500,000 in prize-money for the month. He ended this March with just £99,352 in the satchel and had Luccia’s Champion Hurdle third to be thankful for most of that.
It was a tortuous month and with Henderson’s head presumably scrambled he could be forgiven if he did the wrong thing by Jonbon, a fit and sound horse on the morning of the Champion Chase, but with the yard under that cloud he pulled him out with a view to getting the wheels back on track later in the spring.
It hasn’t worked for all of them – Shishkin would be evidence of that – but Jonbon has blossomed in the spring to such an extent that he has two more Grade 1s on his C.V; his first over the distance of 2m4f at Aintree and now his second Celebration Chase, this one earning more kudos than his first one 12 months ago.
The reason for that? The horse that was in second, El Fabiolo, a rare example of a misfiring Mullins. You have to search long and hard for one of those. Indeed, the plight of El Fabiolo, pulled up in the Champion Chase and a well-beaten second here after more fencing errors, just underlines how ridiculous it is that Mullins has won the UK trainer’s title with his A-listers. El Fabiolo is, after all, Mullins’ second-best horse on official ratings.
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But while Jonbon was helped by El Fabiolo’s sketchy jumping, he won this race with a top-class performance befitting of a horse blessed with his engine. His jumping was quick and brave, his galloping relentless. Such assets suit Sandown, a track where Jonbon is now four from four.
In the head-to-head it’s now Jonbon 2-1 El Fabiolo, a scoreline that looked unlikely when Mullins’ horse was so dominant in the 2023 Arkle, the rematch finally coming on the last day of the jumps season after false dawns at Ascot (abandoned) and Cheltenham (that Henderson pickle).
And Jonbon’s career now stands up well compared to full-brother Douvan, a former Mullins superpower, too, given he’s now £250,000 ahead of his sibling in total prize-money and still a year younger than the age Douvan was when he was forced into early retirement.
Henderson has trip options with Jonbon next season and now isn’t the time to ask him. He predictably spoke in riddles afterwards as he spoke about targets between two and three miles, but then summed things up nicely as he pondered the option of keeping him at two, saying: “Dusting it up like that and making it a proper test of jumping and galloping is pretty damn good.”
In a season that’s been all about Mullins, it was fitting that the man himself had the last laugh when Minella Cocooner landed the historic bet365 Gold Cup on this enjoyable and compelling jumps finale. But after the season he’s had, it was rather nice that Henderson won the final Grade 1 of the campaign with Jonbon. Cause for Celebration, in fact.
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