What a difference a run makes. That was the lesson to be drawn from the outcome of this Betfair Chase, in which Cue Card left behind his reappearance flop of three weeks before and coasted to a 15-length success over Coneygree.
The runner-up suffered his first defeat over fences and will no longer carry the aura of invincibility that grew around him after he won the Gold Cup as a novice last year. But Coneygree had not raced for a full year, following a hock injury last autumn, and was returning in a top-class race on heavy going. Any horse can be forgiven for getting tired in those circumstances.
“What I’m hoping is that by the time we get to the last, Cue Card will be out on his feet,” Sara Bradstock, half of the Coneygree training team, told Saturday’s Racing Post. But the really startling thing about this race was that Cue Card never really looked tired in the way that staying chasers are entitled to look at the end of three miles.
The contrast with his previous run could hardly be greater. He was an odds-on failure in Wetherby’s Charlie Hall, slowing dramatically on the run-in as Irish Cavalier pulled three lengths clear. Here, Irish Cavalier had dropped out of sight before pulling up at the top of the straight.
“I hacked him to the start and I knew instantly things were going to be so much different today,” said the winning jockey, Paddy Brennan. “He keeps surprising me, how good he is. When he’s at the right conditions and he’s got a little bit of ease underfoot, it’s dangerous, what he can do.”
Colin Tizzard, Cue Card’s trainer, shouldered the blame in the days after the Charlie Hall, saying he had been too aggressive in the tactics he had given Brennan. But the jockey insisted here that tactics had not been the problem, that “a combination of things”, including fitness, had been Cue Card’s undoing.
“He was the Cue Card I know [here] and at Wetherby I never had that. When he’s on that form today, you can ride him whatever way you want. He’s different class.”
This was a third Betfair success in four years for the 10-year-old, whose longevity has brought him a significant following. The crowd around the winner’s enclosure gave him three cheers and there were even chants for his trainer of “Co-lin! Co-lin!”
“You never know with a horse, do you?” Tizzard said. “You get a nagging in your mind, he’s coming 11, he might be starting to wane a bit but definitely not.
“Three years ago, we’d have worried about this ground but the few times we’ve run him on it, he sort of floats on top. He’s got such a low, lovely, beautiful, easy action, he doesn’t go in. He didn’t have a hard race at all, did he?”
Cue Card is once more the only possible winner of the Jockey Club’s £1m bonus, offered to any horse that can win the Betfair, Boxing Day’s King George and the Cheltenham Gold Cup in the same season. Tizzard confirmed that the horse will be aimed at the remaining two races and must now consider the implications for his other star chaser, Thistlecrack, a novice who is 10-1 for the King George and remains the Gold Cup favourite at no bigger than 4-1.
Thistlecrack has won both his races over fences but did not entirely convince with his jumping at Cheltenham last time and will seek more experience at Newbury next weekend. Tizzard has seemed interested in giving him the experience of tackling the King George but that may have less appeal, now that Cue Card has such a clear chance in the race.
Bradstock conceded that lack of match practice had found out Coneygree but added, combatively: “We’ll be back. He won’t beat us again.” A tilt at Ireland’s Lexus Chase may be considered but the King George is a more likely target.
“I thought he ran a fantastic race,” added Richard Johnson, who inherited the ride on Coneygree from the injured Nico de Boinville and may be aboard again next time. “He jumped great, he travelled well and did everything bar win. He just got a bit tired from three out but, in that class of race, on that ground, and every other horse in the race has had a run this season...
“You’d have to be delighted with that. Hopefully, he comes out of the race well and they can look towards the King George.”
Vezelay, a 50-1 shot from France, was a game third. Silviniaco Conti, a dual Betfair winner who has not aged so well as Cue Card, was the only other finisher. Seeyouatmidnight proved disappointing and was pulled up.
