cheltenham 2022. Day 2.

​After all the hype, the Champion 2-mile Chase fell apart, leaving us no wiser than at flag fall. Given that Shishkin has won of soft ground six times and on heavy once, I do not buy into the trainer’s explanation that Shishkin couldn’t operate on rain-softened ground. The ground may well have been soft, could even have been verging on heavy, but it was loose, it had no chance to become sticky or quagmire-like as it was still raining when the tapes went up. To my mind, and the horse has already won over nearly 2m-4, Shishkin is a 3-mile horse that because of the stable’s exemplary record with 2-milers are forcing him into following the long magnificent line of Seven Barrows Champion 2-mile chasers. I hope they have a rethink and go up in distance at Aintree. At least he didn’t have a hard race.
The Queen Mother Champion Chase went from a boiling pot of expectation to a damp squib in a very short space of time. Energumene was a worthy winner but at the end of the end what did he beat? Funambule Sivola is a grand little horse but he’ll be hard to place now handicaps are out of the question.
Oh, and what I said about Shishkin, also applies to Envoi Allen. They need to try him over 3-miles.
The race of the day, though, even without the withdrawn Bravemansgame, was the 3-mile novice chase won by L’Homme Presse from Ahoy Senor, two young British-trained horses, both with next season’s Gold Cup on their trainers’ radar. For different reasons both were impressive and I was especially pleased for Venetia Williams to have again a genuine Gold Cup horse. She is a remarkable trainer, deserving of a higher quality of horse than is the norm for her stable. It is also pleasing that Charlie Deutch is reaping the rewards for getting his head and working hard. I am not jumping on any bandwagons as I said this earlier in the season, he is perhaps the best jockey riding at the moment.
My caveat about Ahoy Senor is that he constantly reminds me of Carvill’s Hill in that he is an infuriating mixture of brilliant talent and an accident waiting to happen. He is either spot-on at a fence or ditheringly wrong; there is no area of in-between that allows his jockey to manage the situation. I suspect that no amount of schooling, no tutelage from any of the 3-day event riders that specialise in correcting this type of horse, no cavalletti training, will solve the riddle. Hopefully Derek Fox can work him out because if that was the Gold Cup distance yesterday, he could easily have won, which, given his dodgy jumping, would have been a magnificent achievement.
Although I didn’t witness any poor starts yesterday, Tuesday was beleaguered by haphazard starts. As someone in the Letters Column of the Racing Post recently suggested, why not do away with the tapes and just start races by the dropping of a flag? If you add this to my idea of a box laid out with shavings or foam, in which the horses must gather, with the horse facing in the right direction wholly the responsibility of its jockey and whether horses are standing still, jogging or cantering within that box, the starter drops his flag and the race has begun. Re-stringing the tape takes time, occasionally it can be dangerous when it gets around the necks of either a jockey or horse – well, you know what I am talking about. What is clear, the present system, especially for Cheltenham, is designed to fail, which it does frequently.
As for the clerk of the course watering the course prior to a day of rain; it was just bad luck he took notice of the wrong weather forecast. Though really the blame can be laid at the feet of trainers who historically have complained when the clerk hasn’t watered and withdrawn horses on the excuse that the ground is drying out. On this occasion, the clerk of the course made a poor call; on another day he might be called a genius for  making exactly the same decision.