If the secret of winning a battle is to fight it on a field of your choosing, then Cyrname should probably be favourite for his hugely anticipated head-to-head with Altior at Ascot on Saturday afternoon. The track, the trip and the right-handed direction of travel all look ideal for Cyrname – but Harry Cobden, his jockey, knows it is not that simple. “He’s certainly been very effective around here on his last two runs,” Cobden said at Ascot on Friday. “But he’s only been good for his last two runs. Altior’s been good for the last five years.”
It is closer to four years than five but the point is still a good one. And Altior has not simply been good, but unbeatable, in a record-breaking 19-race winning streak over jumps that stretches back to his hurdling debut in a novice event at Chepstow in October 2015. It works out as around 76 minutes of racing, and there have been very few moments in all that time when defeat seemed possible, never mind likely.
It is very possible on Saturday. There has been money for Altior over the last couple of days, but at 4-6, he is still a bigger price for the Christy 1965 Chase than for 13 of his 14 starts over fences. That, in turn, says a great deal about Cyrname’s remarkable performance on his most recent start in the Ascot Chase, over the same trip as Saturday’s race. Sent straight to the front by Cobden, he jumped brilliantly and then quickened again three out to finish 17 lengths clear of a field that included three previous Grade One winners.
It was enough to see him promoted – abruptly and, some feel, a little prematurely – to the pinnacle of the chasing tree on a mark of 176, 1lb in front of Altior. While Altior brings a 19-race winning streak to the ring, Cyrname’s status as the best chaser in training means that he has a belt of his own to put on the line. “It will sort out one thing,” Nicky Henderson, Altior’s trainer, said earlier this week. “Who is top-rated?”
Cobden deflects all the credit for Cyrname’s sudden ascent to the efforts of the staff at Paul Nicholls’s Ditcheat stable in calming down a headstrong young chaser and allowing him to focus on racing. The effect, first in an Ascot handicap which Cyrname won by 21 lengths and then in the Ascot Chase, has been remarkable.
“He was always very tricky at home,” Cobden says. “But he’s calmed down a lot and that’s allowed Paul to train him. He’s got a great work rider at home in Scott Marshall, who rides him every day and does a fantastic job keeping him settled. That’s has a massive part to play.
“I’ve only ridden him once this year, when Scott was in Ireland with [last year’s King George winner] Clan Des Obeaux, and I wouldn’t do as good a job as Scott.”
But if the hard work has been done at home, it surely helps that Cyrname’s rider at the track is as calm and composed as they come.
Though still just 21, Cobden is well-established as Nicholls’s stable jockey after a first season in the role which saw the trainers’ championship return to the stable for the first time in three years.
Always laid back to the point of horizontal, he will treat Saturday’s meeting with Altior, who will be running over three furlongs further than in any of his earlier contests over jumps, as just another race like all the others.
“When it’s something you enjoy, it’s never stressful,” Cobden says. “I’d be up about six every morning and make a plan for the day, and I take it all day-by-day.
“Altior isn’t a keen sort, he normally settles very well and jumps great so he’s got the perfect profile to step up in trip and allow himself to get the trip, so I don’t think that will be the issue. And I wouldn’t want to go too quick myself out in front, because that might play into his hands too much if we burn ourselves out.
“I definitely wouldn’t want to overthink it [on Saturday]. I’m fairly confident that he’s very fit and well at home at the moment and he’s having plenty of work. Going into the race, we couldn’t be happier with him. I think we’ll all be pretty relaxed about it on Saturday and just take it in our stride.”
Harry Cobden is an ambassador for Great British Racing
