Nicky Henderson serves up a three-pronged attack on Saturday’s feature Howden Long Walk Hurdle, including likely favourite Buzz, but there has unsurprisingly been more pre-race noises regarding stablemate Champ.
The trainer was back raising a few notable eyebrows when telling the Racing Post in midweek that he’s “run out of races” over fences for the nine-year-old, despite having apparently swerved the Ladbrokes Trophy, the Betfair Chase and the Many Clouds Chase, on top of the horse still officially holding an engagement in Leopardstown’s Savills Chase on December 28.
Aside from the fact Henderson clearly sees the idea of taking on the Irish any time before April as some sort of punchline more likely to be found inside a Christmas cracker than on a realistic pre-Festival schedule, having also stated that the Long Walk had “never been the plan” what could also be concluded is that Champ’s supposed third chasing campaign is potentially over before it has begun.
So how will it all end up for this enigmatic talent as the horse who somehow managed to beat last season’s Gold Cup winner Minella Indo and Ryanair Chase winner Allaho in a dramatic edition of the 2020 Festival Novices’ Chase (then RSA, now Brown Advisory) switches back to the smaller obstacles this weekend?
Could Champ thrive over hurdles?
Chopping and changing disciplines is hardly a new phenomenon of course, even at the very highest level. Indeed, we have plenty of evidence when it comes to classy operators who started a season over fences and ended it competing at the top table over hurdles.
The legendary Big Buck’s is the prime example here, his unseating Sam Thomas in the 2008 Hennessy acting as the trigger for connections and subsequently leaving most National Hunt fans as believers in the notion of predestination.
The Henderson-trained Buveur D’Air also famously won the first of his two Champion Hurdle titles after a couple of attempts in novice chases before the turn of the year, while Lisnagar Oscar is another recent Stayers’ Hurdle victor to have kicked off the previous autumn jumping fences. As had the horse he beat into second that March – the Martin Smith-trained Ronald Pump, who is incidentally among Champ’s opposition at Ascot this Saturday.
But Champ is quite an extraordinary case when it comes to the famed ‘return to hurdles’ route, as he not only competed in Grade One company over fences last season, but also ran in the Cheltenham Gold Cup. And the last horse to have gone from Gold Cup one spring, to Stayers’ Hurdle the next, is Bobs Worth.
Also trained by Henderson, he ties in closely as well being a former Festival hero who, like Champ, was pulled-up in the Gold Cup before starting the following year over hurdles. He (presumably quite surprisingly, 11/1) won on his comeback at Aintree in 2015 before being switched back to fences for another shot at the Hennessy, which he’d landed in 2012, but could manage only sixth behind Smad Place at Newbury.
Bobs Worth was also sixth in the Relkeel returned to timber on New Year’s Day before ultimately ending up third at 33/1 in the Stayers’ Hurdle, a race that proved to be his final outing.
So only a couple of weeks after Ben Linfoot posed the question ‘is Sporting John a staying hurdler?’ on these pages, we find ourselves asking something very similar about Champ – only this time we’re dealing with an exhibit Timeform recently considered to be among the top dozen National Hunt horses in training.
Unmissable and coming soon...
Champ has always been Box Office, way back to the rumours of incredible pieces of work in his early days at Seven Barrows and subsequent naming after one of the greats of the game.
Then followed the silky-smooth Grade One breakthrough in the Challow Hurdle; the time he almost clattered into the elbow when Barry Geraghty may or may not have suffered a brief lapse in concentration; the crunching fall two-out in the Dipper; the seen-to-be-believed Festival success two seasons back (replay in full above); and the slightly odd Cheltenham prep this February when dropped right back to two miles for the Game Spirit Chase.
Checking out before the seventh fence in the Gold Cup when last sighted wasn’t pretty viewing but often the most-loved heroes must trace something of a redemption arc, atoning for their flaws en route to a deserved happy ending.
It’s difficult to be dogmatic when it comes to this particular character and what the medium or long-term future holds, but Champ taking to a racecourse is borderline unmissable and for the ardent believer there is clearly enough to cling onto in order to help keep the dream alive.
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