King George preview: Who will start favourite for the King George VI Chase at Kempton on Boxing day

Who'll start favourite for the King George?

Well let’s start with what’s going to run. No need for quotas here, come all ye faithful, the more the merrier.

And I reckon we’ll have something hovering around the dead eight.

Datsalrightgino is quoted but needs supplementing and Jamie Snowden is not minded to persuade to the owners to do that.

Pic D’Orhy won’t run – Paul Nicholls told Nick Luck that a couple of weeks ago.

Galopin Des Champs is a general 33/1 chance and staying in Ireland, Protektorat ran at Cheltenham on Saturday and is bound for the Winter Millions and it’s two-and-a-half miles next for Edwardstone not three thank you very much.

That leaves my magnificent seven with the wonderful Frodon or a Dan Skelton roll of the dice with any of My Drogo, Midnight River and Shan Blue the only way of adding any additional cast members.

So who’ll start favourite? Yes I promised we’d get there.

Well unless something strange happens it won’t be Hewick at 33/1 and bound for Kempton according to the Shark. Nor will it be The Real Whacker, on a retrieval mission after his Paddy Power Gold Cup blowout or the Betfair Chase winner Royale Pagaille for all the power and precision he showed at Haydock.

And Shishkin it’s not going to be you. On your best day you’d be in there pitching towards the head of the market but that sulk and plant at Ascot means the chance you might just do the same again is factored into your price.

We, the British racing public, need you mate. Come on, best behaviour please. It is Christmas and those pesky cheekpieces are safely tucked away in the Seven Barrows storage coverage.

So it’s a three-way fight top the market.

Gerri Colombe currently shades it. As short as 2/1 and a top-priced 5/2. He’s the potential improver in here, the second season chaser having his first shot at this sort of prize.

He was just about the top staying novice chaser last season despite falling a stride short of overhauling The Real Whacker in the Brown Advisory. He returned to winning ways at Aintree and reappeared with a gutsy defeat of Envoi Allen in the Ladbrokes Champion Chase at Down Royal.

He did well to win there, being forced to switch between the final two fences, and he’s the one in this field who still sports the Timeform p. But he needs that. He’s still 11 pounds below a peak Allaho for example and five adrift of Bravemansgame.

We’ll move onto that pair in a minute but Gerri Colombe will definitely be asked a few different questions around Kempton. The tempo of the race, the nature of the track are two of them. He’s not a plodder and has a high cruising speed but he found himself with too much to do in March and this is a bigger speed test – before the stamina then has to kick in.

He’s clearly a leading player but I’m not certain he’ll start favourite on the day.

I don’t think defending champion Bravemansgame will either. It’s a big shame he didn’t win the Betfair Chase – not just for Daryl Jacob, Paul Nicholls and his owners, but for the fact that – in the modern game – it represented a roll of the big dice.

After all it wasn’t on his radar after a late blunder and the strength of Gentlemansgame in the closing stages saw him finish second in the Charlie Hall Chase at Wetherby.

To dust himself down and head to Haydock three weeks later was the sort of bold campaigning we need to see rewarded if it’s to happen more often. It wasn’t. He was a tired, and eventually well beaten, second behind Royale Pagaille.

Timeform numbers suggest he was seven pounds behind his Wetherby form that day and another six (I’ll do the maths so 13 in total) adrift of peak Bravemansgame.

183 was the number he hit when running out a brilliant winner of this very race last term and the figure he ran to when chasing home Galopin Des Champs in the Boodles Cheltenham Gold. It was 182 at Punchestown in April too behind Fastorslow.

That’s high-class form. The job Nicholls has, and the British champion trainer has few if any peers with staying chasers, is to get the engine back purring at that sort of level.

And even if it does – even if he’s back right at the top of his game – it might not be enough.

Bravemansgame is a general 5/2 or 11/4 chance but Allaho is 7/2 and that’s the price I think will disappear long before the Turkey sandwiches and final mince pies are dispatched to complete the Kempton prep.

Factored in are two things. Is he going to run and can he – himself – be coaxed back to the top of his game?

Let’s start with he first. The answer seems to be yes. Chris Richardson of Cheveley Park Stud said as much on Friday – as did trainer Willie Mullins in his column on our site.

Ten days out and the ferry is booked.

So can he deliver something in the very region of that 189 Timeform figure? Well there has to be a chance.

He ran to 188+ with his first breakthrough win in the 2021 Ryanair and 189+ in capturing the same race 12 months later.

And they’re not flash-in-the-pan figures. 187+ in the Kinloch Brae of 2022 and 187 flat in winning the Punchestown Gold Cup that spring are also on the CV.

It adds up to this. At his peak Allaho is the best horse in the race. The question is how much of that ability remains after he missed most of last season with a very unusual setback

“He got a little bleed in his spleen. He just got that doing normal exercise at home, very unusual, but he is a big unit, a huge horse, probably one of the biggest horses we have in the place here,” Mullins told this very site in the pre-season stable tour.

And the good news is the wheels have stayed on through the autumn. He isn’t returning from a tendon injury or something that involved month after month of box rest and recuperation either.

And we’ve seen him on the racecourse too. Yes it was a penalty kick in the Clonmel Oil Chase back in November and in running to 175+ he didn’t need to showcase all of his firepower but there was enough there – taking everything into account – to suggest there could still be bigger days ahead.

So to Kempton and the chance to park his tank back on the Grade One staying chase lawn. And I think – by the times the tapes go up – he’ll be favourite to do just that.

There are signs the Mullins juggernaut is clanking into top gear for the Festive season and that won't go unnoticed. Home reports about the giant nine-year-old are encouraging and replays of those two Ryanair wins will be played over and over again between now and Boxing Day.

Punters will put their faith in the Mullins magic working once again and Allaho potentially producing the sort of performance that will earn him a spot alongside Desert Orchid and Kauto Star on the King George showreels in the years to come.

He’s the one horse in here who could blow the race apart.

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