Gary Moore, who will saddle last year’s winner Sire De Grugy in the Queen Mother Champion Chase at Cheltenham next week, said on Tuesday that he is “pretty confident” that his nine-year-old will beat both Sprinter Sacre, who took the race in 2013, and Dodging Bullets, a dual Grade One winner this season.
Sire De Grugy has had an interrupted season since recording perhaps the most memorable victory of the 2014 Cheltenham Festival, which was a first win at the meeting for rider Jamie Moore, the trainer’s son, and only his father’s second at the Festival in a 22-year career. An injury kept Sire De Grugy off the track until Betfair day at Newbury in mid-February, when he fell in the home straight in the Game Spirit Chase, but he looked back to his best form when successful in a handicap at Chepstow two weeks later.
The nine-year-old looked magnificent at Moore’s stable near Horsham in Sussex, gleaming as only a chestnut can, and his trainer radiated confidence to match when asked if Sprinter Sacre, who suffered a minor bleed from a nostril when returning earlier this year after a heart problem, is the horse he fears most next week.
“I’m looking forward to it because I think he’s going there with a serious chance,” Moore said. “I just hope he gets luck in running like he did last year, because that’s all-important in a race of that calibre. If [habitual front-runner] Special Tiara runs and Champagne Fever, I can see there being heaps of pace in the race, which will suit us, the faster they go, the better.
“I’ve got my own views on him [Sprinter Sacre]. I can’t have a horse that bleeds. Once they bleed outwards, they will bleed twice as much inwardly. And he [Sire De Grugy] did a faster time when he won the Champion Chase than Sprinter Sacre did, and when he won the Clarence House [at Ascot in January 2014] he did a faster time than Sprinter Sacre did [the previous year] as well.
“Times don’t lie. I haven’t taken into account the ground, but it was both on the same track and carrying the same weight, so there’s not too much difference. He’s done two faster times than he [Sprinter Sacre] has done.
“[Dodging Bullets is] beatable as well. I’m pretty confident that we can beat them two, with luck in running. It sounds bolshie about it but Grey Gold got too close to Dodging Bullets [when last of five runners in this year’s Clarence House Chase] at Ascot and didn’t have a hard race. We’ve given him 20lb and beaten him seven lengths [at Chepstow last time]. That’s the theory I’m working on.”
Sprinter Sacre was running for the first time since being pulled up with an irregular heartbeat in December 2013 when he finished second behind Dodging Bullets in the Clarence House Chase in January. He has not recorded a victory for nearly two years, but remains the favourite for next week’s race at 11-4, with Sire De Grugy second in the market at a top price of 7-2. Dodging Bullets is 11-2 and Champagne Fever, from the Willie Mullins yard in Ireland, is a 6-1 chance, with other contenders including the Game Spirit winner Mr Mole on offer at 10-1 or bigger.
“Champagne Fever would be one you’d be concerned about, and of course, I respect Dodging Bullets and Sprinter Sacre, don’t get me wrong, I’m not stupid,” Moore said. “But some people say Sprinter Sacre blew up at Ascot, I can’t have that. He was as fit as a butcher’s dog, and he’d been to Newbury [for a racecourse gallop in late December] before.
“He’s entitled to come on for the run, but he’d had a gallop around Newbury and Nicky Henderson [Sprinter Sacre’s trainer] doesn’t run unfit horses.”
In addition to his injury earlier in the season, a mercurial nature means that Sire De Grugy has never been an entirely straightforward horse to train. He was wearing the plastic shoes on Tuesday morning which he will also carry in next week’s race, having worn them for the first time when winning at Chepstow last month.
“He’s got plastic shoes on now, we had them changed yesterday,” Moore said. “He got a corn before he went to Newbury and it was touch and go whether I could run him or not. He was sound two days before the race so we took him [there] but when he came back, we had to cut the corn out. Since then, because we took so much out, he has to run in these shoes.
“I was a bit nervous about them at Chepstow because it’s a different footing for them, but we’ve stuck with them. He’s temperamental and he’s not an easy horse to shoe so we have to dope [sedate] him, and we had to do it yesterday so that he’s clear [under the] Jockey Club rules. It’s just quite an unusual thing to see on a horse, white shoes [and] I think they must be Guccis because they’re quite expensive, but they’ve done the job.
“You can shoe him in front without doping him but you can’t shoe him behind. He will [kick out]. We have to dope him to clip him and things like that. I couldn’t believe it at Cheltenham with all the people running up behind him and smacking him on he backside, I thought someone was going to end up in the sky, but he was as good as gold then. But if you went in the stable and tried to mess about with him behind, he’d let you know.
“When I clip most horses, you can get away with 2mm [of tranquilliser] but with him it has to be 4mm. Two, he laughs at it. Four, you can just about get away with it, and normally you’ve got an hour to clip a horse, but with him it’s got to be 45 minutes or he’ll be well awake again. He’s a real character.”
Ryan Moore, Gary’s eldest son and arguably the world’s best Flat jockey, was at Cheltenham last year to enjoy his close-knit family’s finest moment on the track, while Sire De Grugy was also the first horse to be bought by Steve Preston, a lifelong racing fan who moved into ownership to celebrate his 50th birthday. With National Hunt increasingly dominated by multi-millionaire owners whose strings run to dozens of horses, Sire De Grugy’s victory was seen by many fans as a refreshingly homespun success, and he remains one of the most popular horses in training.
“It was a little bit of a life-changing thing for me,” Moore said. “It brought new owners to the yard, gave me more to buy better horses hopefully, and the amount of people that want you to do well is unbelievable really.
“It’s all thanks to Sire De Grugy, he’s just very special. I just wanted everything to go right [on the day], to prove that I can do the job like Paul Nicholls does it every year. It was down to me. If that horse hadn’t won at Cheltenham it would have been down to me that I must have done something wrong. You’ve got the chance of producing a good horse and I managed to do it, with the help of everybody who’s associated with the place. Everybody was there and it was a great sense of achievement in every way.”
