Cheltenham trials (and succeeds)
February 1st, 2010 by Donn McCleanWith Denman sitting at home in his box on Saturday, anxious about the volume of sales of his new scarf (dark green with a white chevron and chequered ends) and disconsolate at the fact that it is not as tastefully designed as that of his next door neighbour Kauto Star (green with yellow spots, purple trimmings), Cheltenham Festival Trials Day at (strangely) Cheltenham went ahead without him, in grave danger of wresting the Most Outlandish Claim Of The Year So Far title from the guy at Irish Life and Permanent who said that they really had the best interests of their customers at heart.
Step forward Taranis and Tidal Bay to rescue the situation.
Taranis was good. We hadn’t seen him since he was pulled up with an injured tendon in the 2007 King George. (Yes, Kauto Star won that one too.) That’s over two years ago. Since then, he has been busy recovering from injury and trucking up and down the hill at Ditcheat, doing slow work but no fast work apparently, to the point where trainer Paul Nicholls was fairly lukewarm on his chances on Saturday.
“We’ve had some setbacks this season too,” the trainer said in his Racing Post column (apparently he got a bug just before Christmas), “so it’s been a hard road back and I have yet to see the old ability’s still there.”
They make fools of you, these horses. Nicholls is one of the most forthright trainers in the business. If he said that he had yet to see the old ability, then you can be sure that he had yet to see the old ability, and he was more surprised than most in the winner’s enclosure afterwards. But Taranis travelled in his race with the old ability, the ability that saw him win a Ryanair Chase and a James Nicholson Chase in 2007. All the while you waited for lack of a recent run to take its toll. Okay, they can train them to win on their seasonal debuts these days, with their all weather gallops and their new-fandangled hills, but you still have to think that they will be better on their second runs, with a little bit of match practice under their girths, in the same way as Kerry are a better team in the second round than they are in the first, even though they hardly go into the first round unfit.
But Taranis didn’t blow up. On the contrary, the 16/1 shot, freely available at 20/1 and more, eased his way up to Carruthers’s withers over the second last, took it up over the last and powered away up the hill. If you wanted to be harsh, you would point to the fact that he jumped continually to his right (perhaps something is still ailing him a little, I don’t remember him ever doing that before), and the fact that the time wasn’t great, and that the race may have fallen apart a little, with Inchidaly Rock falling and Carruthers jumping fairly indifferently, but you can only ever beat what they put in front of you, and Taranis did so in style.
It was disappointing that Inchidaly Rock, another Ditcheat resident and the choice of Ruby Walsh (how many have they got?), fell at the third last on the first circuit, a novice’s fall by a novice, as it would have been interesting to see how he would have fared, but he would have wanted to have been mighty good to beat his stable companion on the day. It was a fine result for Paul Nicholls on a fine day, even with The Tank and Kauto Star (surely he deserves a nickname at this stage) at home. What’s the point in playing your Ace or your King when you can win the trick with your Jack or maybe even your 10?
Then there was Tidal Bay. It may have been a last roll of the die on Howard Johnson’s part, but he took off the cheekpieces and allowed the horse go commando, with just the noseband that he wore in the 2008 Arkle to help him point his nose in the right direction, and sent him back over hurdles, his first run over the small ones since he beat Wins Now in the Mersey Hurdle at Aintree in April 2007, and the horse responded.
Perhaps he had an inkling that it was his last chance to book his place in the box for the Festival (Cheltenham Festival Trials Day indeed), but he travelled like a nice dream through the race for Brian Hughes and, despite making mistakes at the second last and at the last, he galloped gallantly up the hill, him and his noseband and his high head carriage, to out-speed the stayer Time For Rupert (who still deserves his place in the World Hurdle picture on this evidence, given that he was conceding 4lb and three years to the winner) and previous Champion Hurdle winner Katchit, and earn short quotes (as big as 20/1 directly after the race, as short as 7/1 now) for the World Hurdle. He deserves them too. He could be the one to put it up to the favourite.
Coincidentally, this race was won last year by another would-be chaser who was busy trying to rebuild a career over hurdles for himself. His name was Big Buck’s, and he didn’t turn out half bad.
* For more of Donn’s thoughts, visit www.donnmcclean.com.
SIGN UP FOR €200 FREE BET TODAY WITH BET365
Categories: Horse racing
Comments (0)