Coneygree is once more a likely runner in the Hennessy Gold Cup a week on Saturday, following the news his lame foot was successfully reshod on Thursday. Punters were warned, however, that the Cheltenham Gold Cup hero, who remains unbeaten over fences, is “not out of the woods yet”.
Mark and Sara Bradstock, the training team behind Coneygree, set Thursday as a deadline for putting a shoe back on his left-hind after he injured it on Monday. That task having been completed, Sara reported that “things are looking a lot rosier”.
Of the horse’s attempt on the Hennessy, she added: “I’m not promising anything but it is now a live possibility. The bruise has gone but there is still a chance some pus could come out of the foot. There is also a chance the bruise could come back after we gallop him.
“He’ll gallop on Sunday and we’ll see how he is after that. We’re not out of the woods yet but we’ve made a step in the right direction and if things keep going as they are then hopefully we’ll get there.”
The Hennessy has been Coneygree’s aim since his Cheltenham Festival victory in March and it would drain the race of significant colour if he were to miss the contest at such a late stage. He was clipped a point to 5-1 after the positive news but Saphir Du Rheu remains favourite at 4-1.
The latter’s trainer, Paul Nicholls, had news of another of his stable stars, having decided to send Irving to Haydock on Saturday for a valuable hurdle race. It had been expected Irving would be saved for Newcastle’s Fighting Fifth the following weekend, a race he won last year but Nicholls said of the Haydock option: “It’s a £100,000 race. You’d be mad not to run when he likes soft ground and you’ve got Top Notch to beat. And he is in good order, he worked great yesterday.”
The trainer added he was not ruling out the possibility of also running Irving in the Fighting Fifth, provided he recovered from Haydock in time.
Sir Des Champs became the latest former star to rediscover the winner’s enclosure when he scored at Thurles in his first race for 691 days. The runner-up to Bobs Worth in the 2013 Gold Cup, the nine-year-old has been sidelined since a tendon injury was diagnosed the following January but he made a stylish comeback when reeling in Rubi Light after that rival had built up what seemed an insurmountable advantage.
Willie Mullins described himself as “very happy” with the run and nominated the Lexus Chase at Leopardstown over Christmas as Sir Des Champs’ next race. He is 7-1 for that and 33-1 for the Gold Cup in March.
The attention of the betting community was gripped by a seeming gamble on four runners from the small Lewes yard of Sheena West on Thursday but all four ran deplorably after their odds crashed from double figures to as short as 11-8 at one point. It emerged that the “plunge” was caused by Dan Steele, who owned all four, backing them to win “about £1m” in each-way accumulators with two firms at their initial odds.
“At them prices combined, you don’t need to put on a lot,” Steele said before the action began. “I thought, at the prices last night, on their handicap marks, they all have great each-way chances. I wouldn’t back any of them at the prices they are now. They’re ridiculous.”
David Williams at Ladbrokes poured scorn on suggestions that alarm bells might ever have been ringing at his firm. “This was tuck shop money,” he said. “This is stretching the definition of a gamble to its absolute limits.
“It involved some very early prices which swiftly disappeared and no one else really joined in. These were weak races with weak markets, so it would never take a great deal of cash nowadays to trigger what looks like a price crash.
“When people suggest ‘The bookies would have been caned,’ that would only have happened if the first one or two had won and then other people would have started joining in.”
That, Williams said, had been a major part of the problem when bookmakers were soaked by a Barney Curley gamble early last year. On that occasion, all four horses won and many other punters had joined in before the last of them ran, five hours after the first.
