Scottish Sun columnist and Racing TV analyst Ed Watson casts his eye over the northern challenge heading to next week's Festival and assesses their prospects for success.
Wins 12 months ago for Corach Rambler (Ultima), The Real Whacker (Brown Advisory) and Iroko (Martin Pipe) provided the North with its best return at the Festival since 2012. If you expected an Alamo-style charge from beyond Hadrian’s Wall and over the Pennines on the back of that, then prepare to be disappointed.
Once again, Lucinda Russell will be leading from the front. She’ll have Oliver Greenall and Josh Guerriero as her wingmen. And that’s pretty much it. The rest of the cavalry have been left behind.
Donald McCain, Nicky Richards, Brian Ellison, Micky Hammond, Rebecca Menzies and Sandy Thomson have barely an entry of note between them. Sue Smith, Nick Alexander and Mark Walford have none.
It’s a depressing state of affairs, and for British racing at large, as Ireland (and one man in particular) tighten their grip on the game still further. For those with the North’s best interests at heart, we can only hope the landscape looks marginally less barren at Aintree.
IROKO (Turners Novices’ Chase, 1.30 Thursday)
To many Festival goers, St Patrick’s Thursday is the lowest-key of the four days. For Oliver Greenall and Josh Guerriero, however, it’s potentially a defining one in their upwardly-mobile training partnership.
Iroko’s victory in last year’s Martin Pipe handed the Cheshire chums a cherished, high-profile triumph in a hugely productive first season as an official combination. Now comes the JP McManus-owned six-year-old’s shot at providing them with a breakthrough Grade 1 success.
The French-bred gelding made a sparking chasing debut at Warwick in the first week of November, swatting away Golden Son (Grade 2 novice hurdle winner in France) and Kilbeg King (since placed in the Kauto Star and Reynoldstown) hard held. Ruled out for the rest of the season with a foot injury shortly after, it’s testament to the duo’s training skills, as well as the horse’s constitution and temperament, that he’s made a quicker-than-expected recovery.
Trouble is, we’ve not seen Iroko since Warwick. And for all that his jumping was pretty much foot perfect there, going into the heat of a Grade 1 on the back of just one run over fences four months earlier is far from the ideal preparation, no matter how you try to dress it up. How his jumping holds up under the pressure of top-level racing pace will be a fascinating watch, albeit a potentially white-knuckle one for Greenall, Guerriero and his backers.
WHITE RHINO (Pertemps Final, 2.10 Thursday)
Win, lose or draw with Iroko, the double Gs go again with a horse who’s taken a very different route to the Festival. From an opening mark of just 74 thirteen months ago, White Rhino has won five of his eight starts in handicaps, finished second twice more and climbed 55lb in the ratings.
That this big, bruising son of Doyen should be a slow-burning type, who’s only now coming into his own at the age of eight, shouldn’t really surprise. His continued progress is also a fine advertisement for the talents and sagacity of his astute young handlers.
White Rhino has improved again for the step to three miles on his last two starts. Firstly when overcoming a muddling pace to beat Bold Endeavour over the same New Course track and trip in December; then when finishing third in Huntingdon’s Pertemps qualifier six weeks later. Put away since then to preserve his mark of 129, the Rhino needs four drop-outs to sneak in at the foot of the handicap.
AHOY SENOR (Ryanair Chase, 2.50 Thursday)
You could write chapter and verse about Ahoy Senor’s jumping technique. The surprisingly conservative way he was ridden in the Ascot Chase last time. Or whether he would be better suited to the demands (and fewer, smaller obstacles) of the feature race of Thursday, which comes up 40 minutes later. Yet it’s the Ryanair Chase, rather the Stayers’ Hurdle or Gold Cup, that has been settled upon as his intended target this year.
There’s little to be gained by going over the aforementioned points, which have been debated in depth over recent weeks and months. If you’re not a fan of a horse fondly known in Perthshire as Hank the Tank by now, you probably never will be.
What is worth reiterating, though, is that Ahoy Senor is undoubtedly a significantly better horse in the spring. In six starts in March or April - five of them in Grade 1s, either here or at Aintree - he’s finished out of the first two just once (when falling six out in last season’s Gold Cup).
He won last season’s Cotswold Chase on the New Course, was still travelling sweetly in the lead when coming to grief in the Gold Cup; and was in the process of running his best of this season in defence of his Cotswold Chase crown when one of stand-in jockey Stephen Mulqueen’s stirrup leathers inexplicably snapped at the top of the hill on the final circuit. He has also finished second to L’Homme Presse in a Brown Advisory on the Old Course.
Don’t doubt his rider Derek Fox’s temperament for the big stage, either. From just seven previous Festival rides, the Sligo pilot has ridden two winners (supremely executed stalking rides on Corach Rambler in two Ultimas), finished second on Ahoy Senor (2022 Brown Advisory), third on 50/1 rag Sky Khan (2016 Martin Pipe), and fourth and fifth on Big River (2019 and 2020 Ultima).
He’s also won the Grand National twice from just four rides. Fox may not be fashionable, but he is not to be underestimated.
CORACH RAMBLER and THE REAL WHACKER (Boodles Cheltenham Gold Cup, 3.30 Friday)
Jockey Club Racecourse bigwigs would probably be spitting peacock feathers if they heard a trainer saying they were using the Gold Cup as a warm-up race for a 4m2f handicap a month or so later. Indeed, the only thing that might make such an insulting suggestion marginally more palatable is that, like Cheltenham, JCR are also the owners of Aintree.
Yet a warm-up for the defence of the Grand National crown he captured so impressively 11 months ago is exactly what a tilt at the Gold Cup is for Corach Rambler.
Kept fresh since staying on encouragingly enough up the Haydock straight for an arm’s-length third to Royale Pagaille on his first crack at Grade 1 company in November’s Betfair Chase, he’ll be ridden to pick up whatever pieces are left to be picked up.
He’s 3-3 around Cheltenham, having won a novices’ handicap on the New Course three months prior to the first of his back-to-back Ultima victories, and will be running home as strongly as anything late in the day. The key for regular rider Fox will be to keep him within striking distance through the relentless pace that fellow northern raider The Real Whacker, last season’s Brown Advisory winner for Yorkshire-based Patrick Neville, is likely to play a part in helping to force from the off.
I don’t expect Corach Rambler to beat Galopin Des Champs. Not many will. But neither would I put anyone off playing him at 10/1 or 12/1 each-way in the market without the jolly.
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