Trackside Live: Horses to Follow from Trials Day at Cheltenham

Maestro Conti (Dan Skelton)

24 January - Cheltenham - JCB Triumph Trial Juvenile Hurdle

Make no mistake, Maestro Conti has the look of a proper racehorse about him, Vicki’s comments for the Trackside feed for the Sporting Life initially reading “good-looking horse, walks well and alert. Built uphill and powerful” and I found it hard to argue with a single word of that.

“A quality individual” was how she wrapped things up in the summary and he proved two lengths too good for One Horse Town, who despite being on his toes throughout the preliminaries was himself bouncing back to form.

He looked to have plenty in hand at the finish and for all the Kempton win didn’t look that strong form-wise, this does, and he becomes a real contender for the Triumph now.

Jagwar (Oliver Greenall & Josh Guerriero)

24 January - Cheltenham - Betfair Exchange Handicap Chase

Interestingly, both Vicki and myself, independently of each other, thought Jagwar, whilst not unfit by any stretch of the imagination, might just sharpen up for this run in the same way I’ve seen plenty from that yard recently and thought pretty much the same.

We know Jagwar is a quality handicapper and we also know he can be readied with Cheltenham in mind, having won the Plate last year with any amount in hand.

He’s going to be put up another 5/6lb for this and that might just rule him out of a repeat in the Plate, but it makes him an interesting outsider for the Ryanair, the 50-1 around at the time of writing a fair reflection of his current standing, being around 10lb short of the main contenders, but we feel there’s more to come from him yet and we’d not be ruling a place out for this strong-traveling type.

Annual Invictus (Chris Gordon)

24 January - Cheltenham - Glenfarclas Cross Country Handicap Chase

I mean, there’s literally only David even remotely interested in the XC as a race at the Festival but we leave no stone unturned here at Trackside and Annual Invictus, one of two paddock picks for the race on Saturday (the old boy Tommie Beau was the other) might be of interest in six weeks time.

As is often the case with him, he looks like he’s coming to hand in the spring again, and his fourth place on Saturday is all the meritorious for the jockey reporting a slipping saddle at scales afterwards. He was poorly positioned as the race panned out, but he really powered home after the last to pick off Final Orders for fourth and after a couple of tries in the Kim Muir for the past two years, it looks like the XC will be his race this time around.

He’ll be nicely handicapped and drying ground in the spring will be ideal. One to consider on the day at a likely big price.

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