Now the Gold Cup favourite, Thistlecrack, has finally had a race over fences and other high-profile chasers are due to make their reappearances at Ascot and Wetherby this weekend, it is an exciting time of year for jump racing and no one has more reason to look forward to the new season than JP McManus.
As an owner, the Irishman is so prolific in Britain and Ireland that he averages three or four runners each day and he has again been buying horses during the off-season to ensure he will be represented in the best races over the next six months.
Those who will be carrying his green and gold silks for the first time include a winner, a second and a third from the last Cheltenham Festival. He has bought Unowhatimeanharry from the Harry Fry Racing Club, the eight-year-old having improved by two stone through last winter to land the Albert Bartlett at the March Festival. He might have reappeared on Saturdaybut the lack of recent rain means his return to action is likely to be delayed.
McManus’s other acquisitions include a couple of very promising youngsters formerly owned by Jared Sullivan, who decided to cut back dramatically on his jump racing interests this summer. While Sullivan still has shares in Silviniaco Conti and Zarkandar, he gave up the Festival placed runners Bouvreuil and Buveur D’Air.
Bouvreuil, beaten half a length in a novice handicap chase in March, is with Paul Nicholls and holds an entry in the BetVictor Gold Cup back at Cheltenham next month. Buveur D’Air, third in the Supreme Novice Hurdle, went on to win a Grade One at Aintree in April. A switch to novice chasing beckons for Nicky Henderson’s charge and Frank Berry, McManus’s racing manager, reports that his reappearance is “not far away”.
“This time of year is always a time of waiting,” Berry sighed on Thursday, shortly after greeting one of his employer’s horses into the winner’s enclosure at Clonmel. “We’ve got a good few entries at Ascot on Saturday but they might all have to wait a bit, with the ground the way it is. But we’re looking forward to getting a lot of horses out, all of them that showed a nice bit of form last year and some of the new ones.”
One McManus prospect still expected to turn out this weekend is More Of That, entered at Carlisle on Sunday in an intermediate chase that has proved significant in recent years as a starting point for big-name animals. “He had a few problems but he still ran a big race,” Berry said in reference to the eight-year-old’s third place in the Festival’s RSA Chase.
Berry added that the horse had had a wind operation in the summer, not for the first time. If all goes well on Sunday, the BetVictor is a likely target.
More Of That is a general 33-1 shot for the Gold Cup in March, as is McManus’s Minella Rocco, winner of the four-mile novice chase at the last Festival. A major talent and only six years old, Minella Rocco is likely to skip Ascot this weekend but he is reported “in good form”.
McManus has Yanworth for staying hurdle races and the former French Kotkikova, now with Henderson, for mares races, in which sphere it is hoped she may break Willie Mullins’s hold on a particular race at the Festival. Cause Of Causes will again try his luck in staying chases and will be one to keep in mind for the Festival, where he has won for the last two years.
If McManus has a Champion Hurdle candidate, it would be his Triumph Hurdle winner, Ivanovich Gorbatov, a 25-1 shot in current betting lists. But Berry played down that idea with the words: “The filly put him in his place at Aintree and Punchestown,” a reference to the impressive Apple’s Jade. But she had finished behind Ivanovich Gorbatov at Cheltenham. “Anyway Joseph [O’Brien] says he’s in good form and ready to run. He could go to Down Royal next Friday.”
While McManus will surely try to relieve the bookmakers of a few quid this winter, he cannot hope to take from them as much as the Hong Kong Tote had to refund after a botched start on Wednesday led to the first ever void race in the area. A rake used to prepare the track at Happy Valley was propped against the starting stalls and jammed the mechanism so that only some of the stalls opened correctly. According to one report, the equivalent of £13m was refunded to bettors.
