There will be past and potential Cheltenham Festival winners on show before and during racing at Kempton Park on Saturday afternoon, after Nicky Henderson confirmed that Brain Power, Josses Hill and Peace And Co, the 2015 Triumph Hurdle winner, will exercise at the Sunbury track before a card which includes three Grade Two events.
With Charli Parcs, a leading contender for top novice events at the Festival, due to run in the Adonis Hurdle, it promises to be a significant afternoon for Henderson, whose three Adonis winners in the last decade have all gone on to win at the highest level in jump racing.
Pre-Festival gallops at Kempton have become a familiar part of Henderson’s preparations for Cheltenham, and Brain Power in particular will be of interest to racegoers on Saturday afternoon as he has not seen a racecourse since December. The winner of two valuable handicap hurdles this season, Brain Power is top-priced at 8-1 for the Champion Hurdle on 14 March, and will appreciate the ground at Kempton, which is officially good, good-to-soft in places.
“It’s perfect for us,” Henderson said on Friday. “It’s an awayday and a bit of fun for them, they’re only there to enjoy themselves and it’s not a great trial or anything dramatic, but it’s a little bit more than doing the work at home.”
Josses Hill is due to run in the Ryanair Chase at the Festival while Peace And Co, whose second season over hurdles was bitterly disappointing, is on course to run for the first time since last year’s Champion Hurdle in the Imperial Cup at Sandown Park the weekend before Cheltenham. Henderson will be grateful too for the Adonis and a last chance to get a trial run into Charli Parcs, who was a late non-runner from an intended race at Cheltenham in late January.
Henderson has made no secret of his regard for the juvenile, who holds entries in both the Triumph Hurdle and Supreme Novice Hurdle next month, and took this race in 2010 with Soldatino, who went on the take the Triumph a few weeks later. Katarino, his 1999 Triumph winner, also warmed up in the Adonis, while his two other recent winners of the race were Binocular, who finished second in the Supreme Novice Hurdle and took the Champion Hurdle 12 months later, and Katchit, who also took the Champion in his second season over timber.
“Charli Parcs couldn’t run at Cheltenham last time and so we had to wait for this, and he’s been in good form,” Henderson said. “He’s a proper four-year-old, he’s very quick, and I’d like to run him in the Triumph. We’ll see how he gets on tomorrow, but JP [McManus] has got a lot of nice horses and we’ll just have to see who goes where.”
Kempton’s card on Saturday is sometimes seen as a last-chance saloon for Festival contenders who missed an earlier prep race for one reason or another, but it has highlighted plenty of subsequent Grade One winners in recent seasons.
In addition to the future top hurdlers who were successful in the Adonis, Captain Chris took the card’s Pendil Novice Chase in 2011 before landing the Arkle Trophy at Cheltenham a few weeks later, while the Dovecote Novice Hurdle has been won in recent years by Irving, this season’s Grade One Fighting Fifth Hurdle winner, and the much-loved two-mile chaser Sire De Grugy in 2011. Twelve months after that, Sire De Grugy’s successor as the champion two-miler, was the Dovecote runner-up.
It is racing heritage that remains under threat due to the Jockey Club’s proposal to sell Kempton Park to a housing developer, and while these races would presumably find a home elsewhere if Kempton closes, no alternative venue has its well-earned reputation for offering the best possible racing ground in the winter months. Saturday’s Eider Chase at Newcastle will be staged on heavy going and the racing surface at Chepstow is soft, but the ground at Kempton, as so often, is significantly better.
“We could do with a bit of a shower overnight to keep things as they are,” Brian Clifford, Kempton’s director of racing since 1999, said on Friday. “It might be a bit breezy tomorrow, we have high winds forecast around 35 miles an hour, but hopefully we should be OK.
“Nine times out of 10 the Adonis throws up a very useful one that can be in the frame in the Triumph. Its record for throwing up winners over the years is phenomenal. Outside of the King George meeting [at Christmas] this would be our next biggest jumps day, and those Pattern races are placed there for a reason, to support the crown jewels at the Cheltenham Festival.”
Chris Cook’s Saturday tips
Chepstow
1.55 Forza Milan 2.30 Rock The Kasbah
3.05 Yorgonnahearmeroar 3.40 Abbreviate (nb)
4.15 Sew On Target 4.50 Deise Vu 5.20 Crucial Role
Kempton
1.15 Argante 1.50 Charli Parcs 2.25 Frodon
3.00 Peter The Mayo Man 3.35 Viva Steve
4.10 Full Shift 4.45 Irish Prophecy
Lingfield
1.30 Hajaam 2.05 Pretend 2.40 Chester Street
3.15 Mutakayyef 3.50 Rag Tatter 4.25 Rydan
5.00 Etaad (nap)
Newcastle
1.35 Imperial Bay 2.10 Meadowcroft Boy
2.45 Emperor’s Choice 3.20 Zamdy Man
3.55 The Nipper 4.30 Special Wells
5.05 Carlos De Fruitier
Wolverhampton
5.45 Invincible Ridge 6.15 Hannington
6.45 Specialist 7.15 Blitz
7.45 Cyrus Dallin 8.15 Gabrial The Thug
8.45 Murdanova
