Forpady Forcheltenham

The Champion Chase market is a bit like Lanigan’s Ball these days.  Master Minded steps out, Twist Magic steps in, Big Zeb steps out, Forpadydeplasterer steps in again (even though he has far too many syllables for the rhythm of the ditty, such as it is), Well Chief steps out, Kalahari King steps in again, giving them a taste of a real Irish jig, as it were.

Twist Magic looked good in the Tingle Creek on Saturday, no question, and Big Zeb didn’t.  But Twist Magic always looks good at Sandown.  He has run there over fences four times now, he won the Tingle Creek in 2007, he would have been a good second to Master Minded in 2008 had he not fallen at the second last, he won the Celebration Chase there last April, and now he has won another Tingle Creek.  Four efforts, three wins, two Grade 1s and a Grade 2, and a good fall, if there is such a thing.  Three wins from four starts over fences at Sandown, four wins from 12 starts at other tracks.  Go figure.

He was great on Saturday.  He travelled really well, he seemed to enjoy himself out in front, he jumped impeccably for Ruby Walsh and he stayed on well over the last two fences and up the hill.  If you were to crab it, you would point to the fact that the winning time was almost two seconds slower than the time that the novices clocked in the Henry VII Chase earlier, but that would be to be pedantic, Twist Magic had nothing to push him further, he won as he liked, and they did stand still for a second or so when the tape went up, Ruby and AP looking at each other, wondering who would blink first.

As it happened, Ruby blinked first and kicked on, but it may have been that Ruby wanted to blink first.  As a Forpady backer, I was hoping that AP would kick on and lead.  Forpady’s jumping is so good that, with no confirmed front runner, I was thinking that he might have been able to engineer an easy lead for himself and use his fluent jumping to maximum effect down the back straight.  Alas, Ruby got the jump on him, and it was apparent from fairly early in the piece that he and Twist Magic were going to take some catching.

But a Champion Chase aspirant?  Not sure.  In Twist Magic’s three visits to Cheltenham, he has come up with the uninspiring form figures F6F, one fall in the Arkle at the second last when he was travelling well, the other in the Champion Chase when he wasn’t.  There is the caveat that Paul Nicholls says that he has never been better, than he has matured a lot at home, grown in confidence, they are training him differently, on his own a lot.  There was also his seasonal debut this year at Exeter, where he stayed on remarkably well for him over two and a quarter miles, a distance that should have stretched his stamina beyond its limit, on soft ground under a welter burden of 11st 12lb to finish a close third to the useful Planet Of Sound.  Even so, he would have been trained to the minute for Saturday by Nicholls.  That was his season’s objective, the Champion Chase is surely just an after-thought.  He is as short at 5/1 in some lists for Cheltenham, and that is a huge over-reaction to Saturday’s performance in my book.

We often do that, we place too much emphasis on a horse’s latest performance in analysing his future prospects.  Big Zeb, from being as short as 3/1 for the Champion Chase, just a half a point bigger than Master Minded, has suddenly become a 10/1 shot after Saturday.  He didn’t jump well, that’s for sure, and you really can’t not (n.n.) jump well at Sandown in a two-mile chase and expect to be competitive.  But we know that he is better than that.  He has fallen four times, so it is understandable that he has a name as a bad jumper, but actually, in Ireland, he can jump very well, he can make significant ground at his fences.  Perhaps he is able to do that off the slower pace that they usually go in two-mile chases in Ireland, on slower ground, perhaps he just had an off-day on Saturday.  You can’t be sure, but you certainly can’t go writing him off on the back of one run.

That said, the horse to take out of Saturday’s race for Cheltenham for me was Forpadydeplasterer.  Tom Cooper said that he didn’t enjoy the ground at all, yet he still ran a cracker to chase home Twist Magic.  His jumping was good, it kept him in it, but he was just never travelling as well as he can, he wasn’t doing it as easily as Twist Magic was, and it was to his immense credit that he gutsed it out and stuck with the leader for so long.  He was actually still in with a chance (slim one, admittedly) on the run to the second last.
Forpady is probably at his best in the spring and he is definitely at his best on better ground, both of which he will have at Cheltenham in March.  His fast jumping and high cruising speed are best utilised in a fast-run two miles on good ground, which he should get in the Champion Chase, and his win in the Arkle last year proves that, importantly, he can cut it at the Cheltenham Festival.  Master Minded is still obviously lurking around up there at the top of the market, fractured rib or no fractured rib, a fully fit Master Minded still sets the highest of standards, and Kalahari King still has to play his full hand, but it would be surprising if, all things being equal, Forpady was not in there dancing among the best of them next March.

* For more of Donn’s thoughts, visit www.donnmcclean.com.

Categories: Horse racing Irish Racing