Leading Chasers Begin To Make Early Impressions On Road To Gold Cup

With November now here, National Hunt fans will be ‘licking their lips’ as a number of the quality early season chases get underway. Most of the upcoming races over the coming weeks, such as the Paddy Power Gold Cup at Cheltenham, the Betfair Chase at Haydock and the Hennessy Gold Cup at Newbury will undoubtedly ‘mark the cards’ of several with chances ahead of the 2012 Cheltenham Gold Cup or other races at the Cheltenham Festival in March.

Already of course we have seen a number of horses put in performances that have caught the eye to force moves in the early antepost markets. Albertas Run for instance, proved that he is still a top class chaser when winning the Grade 2 Old Roan Chase over 2½ miles at Aintree a couple of weeks ago, where he had his old rival Master Minded well beaten and possibly out of contention for the Gold Cup. Albertas Run in fact will probably not run in the Gold Cup, with the preference of his trainer, Jonjo O’Neill, being a third consecutive win in the Ryanair Chase.

A week later we saw one of Donald McCain’s stable stars, Weird Al, win the Grade Two Charlie Hall Chase at Wetherby, defeating several useful types in the process, including Time For Rupert who was three and a half lengths back in second place. The performances of both the first two home in that race was enough to force bookmakers to respond clipping Weird Al in to 16/1 and Time For Rupert to 14/1 for the Cheltenham Gold Cup. McCain has said his seven year old will probably next go for the King George at Kempton on Boxing Day while Time For Rupert will take on the King George and Gold Cup Champion Long Run in the Betfair Chase.

One Gold Cup contender that emerged over the past weekend was Quito de la Roque who delivered with a scintillating finish to deprive Sizing Europe victory in the Grade One, JN Wine Chase at Down Royal on the 5th November. In fact, at one point in-running, Quito de la Roque was trading at 279/1 on the exchanges as he had slipped seemingly out of contention as they rounded the final bend. At that point the race looked between Sizing Europe and The Nightingale, however, no sooner had the Champion Chaser seen off The Nightingale, it was Quito De La Roque, clearly relishing the trip, who came at him almost from nowhere and went by him with just a half furlong to run. It was a cracking finale to a great race, where both Sizing Europe and The Nightingale, who was running for the first time in almost a year, will improve for the run and on better ground they would both be in with better chances.

Quito De La Roque, who is trained by Colm Murphy has now won six of his last seven chases and looks to be a real Cheltenham contender, if not the leading Irish contender for the Cheltenham feature on Friday 16th March. This win would certainly earn him the right to be the called the best three mile chaser in Ireland and he can go a long way in confirming that when he is next seen in the Grade One Lexus Chase at the end of the year at Leopardstown’s Christmas meeting. His odds for the Gold Cup have been cut from 16/1 to 12/1 following his win, while Sizing Europe, not a certain Gold Cup runner is a 25/1 chance.

With the Paddy Power Open Meeting at Cheltenham this weekend, followed by the Betfair Chase and Hennessy before the month is out, there could be a much clearer picture of who the main pretenders are to Long Run’s crown and I for one am getting seriously excited for the coming months National Hunt action.