Colin Tizzard, like one of his dairy cows swishing away blowflies, dismissed all the questions here on Friday about his running plans at Christmas, and he did so with the amiable forbearance of a man who knows he has been dealt the best hand in the game.
He will either go to Kempton on Boxing Day with the first and second favourite for the King George VI Chase or turn up instead with the hot favourite in two Grade Ones. Why jump either way before he needs to?
Thistlecrack, the best staying hurdler by a distance last season and the favourite for the Gold Cup, is the horse at the centre of all the speculation.
Cue Card, last year’s King George winner, will be one step away from a million-pound bonus if he can land the race again but the continuing question is whether Thistlecrack, a novice, will join him in the big-race field or run instead in the Kauto Star Novice Chase on the same card.
The value of some certainty on Tizzard’s plan for Thistlecrack is summed up in the gelding’s price for the King George: 4-1 if one accepts the risk that he might not line up, or 15-8 with a run. But there is a value in keeping options open too and after seeing Theatre Guide take the feature handicap chase in the Cue Card colours here on Friday, Tizzard was giving little away.
“The thought process is that if [the front-running] Coneygree [the 2015 Gold Cup winner] is in there, it is a flat-out gallop at Kempton. People try and say it is an easy three miles but it isn’t because they go so fast. There’s nothing given or taken and the stayers win.
“Thistlecrack might be able to do that easily and so might Cue Card but we haven’t quite decided which one he’s going to go for. We’re just trying to guide Thistlecrack into the Gold Cup and, if it’s the King George en route, that’s fine but like a lot of these decisions, the later you leave them, the more often you get them right.”
Theatre Guide is now likely to be added to Tizzard’s exceptional team for the Christmas programme by lining up alongside his stable companion Native River in the Welsh National at Chepstow on 27 December. “I’d say that’s his next race. It’s the obvious one for him as he’s a thorough stayer,” Tizzard said. “This is only a fortnight since his last run [in the Hennessy Gold Cup at Newbury] and he’s a better horse today for racing. We’ve left four in [the Welsh National], so we’ve got all the options covered.”
The gloom was beginning to descend a few minutes before four o’clock as the field set out for the final race on the card, a novice hurdle that could also prove to be the most significant event of the day with an eye to the future.
And again it was a Tizzard-trained horse that emerged in front, as Pingshou, one of 15 to join the yard this season to run in the colours of Alan and Ann Potts following the retirement of their previous trainer, Colm Murphy.
Pingshou had shown considerable promise when fourth in a maiden hurdle at Newbury at the Hennessy meeting but still needed to improve sharply to see off a field full of potentially useful performers. Though only a Class Three event, this is a race with several subsequent Grade One winners on its roll of honour, including Tidal Bay, Noland and Darlan, and this year’s renewal looked well up to standard.
Patches of firm ground on the cross-country course meant that only seven runners went to post for the Glenfarclas Cross-Country Chase, the first race on the infield track this season.
Only five completed the course behind the winner Cantlow, as James Best was unseated from Bertie Boru following the fall of Delight My Fire, but both horses and their riders were unhurt.
Ryan Hatch, however, was taken to Bristol Royal Infirmary for tests following his fall from Cogry in the Unicoin Group Handicap Chase.
As a result he will miss the ride on The New One in the stanjames.com International Hurdle at Cheltenham on Saturday, with Richard Johnson stepping in to replace him.
“At the moment they are looking at possible damage to his sternum,” Carl Llewellyn, assistant to The New One’s trainer, Nigel Twiston-Davies, said.
“He was originally going to Gloucestershire Royal Hospital but he’s now on his way to Bristol. I don’t know much more than that, whether it is bruising or something else.”
