The strength in depth of JP McManus’s squad for this season’s Cheltenham Gold Cup is unprecedented but more of them than might be ideal could begin the road to Cheltenham in this Sunday’s John Durkan Chase.
Fact To File, last season’s hugely exciting Brown Advisory winner, is challenging reigning Gold Cup champion Galopin Des Champs for favouritism in blue riband betting lists for March.
He is on course to make his first start of this season in the Durkan where he could be joined in Punchestown’s €150,000 feature by two other McManus-owned Gold Cup contenders in Inothewayurthinkin and Spillane’s Tower.
The latter secured trainer Jimmy Mangan a memorable Grade One double at Fairyhouse and Punchestown last Spring while Gavin Cromwell prepared Inothwayurthnkin to land the Kim Muir at Cheltenham before scoring at the top level in Aintree.
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Combined with another Cheltenham festival winner in Corbetts Cross, as well as the Grand National hero I Am Maximus, they give McManus an enviable Gold Cup pack to shuffle and dealing them out is proving rather too straightforward.
“They don’t have much choice as to where to go. I think the three of them will tog out in the Durkan. Definitely, Inthewayurthinkin and Fact To File will tog out. I’ve to speak to Jimmy but more than likely he [Spillane’s Tower] will too. There’s really nowhere else for them to,” McManus’s racing manager, Frank Berry, said on Monday.
“If they miss the weekend they’ll have no run before Christmas. It’s definitely not ideal they all have to tog out in the one race but there isn’t any choice because the races aren’t there. Christmas is only around the corner. We’ll get the weekend out of the way and see how they get on,” he added.
It opens the mouthwatering prospect of McManus’s crop of exciting youngsters taking on the established order if Galopin Des Champs and defending Durkan champion Fastorslow line up too. The latest acceptance stage for the race is on Tuesday.
Other McManus cards could be played at Haydock on Saturday where Britain’s first Grade One of the National Hunt season, the Betfair Chase, takes place.
Corbett’s Cross was ruled out because of a bad scope but Limerick Lace could take her chance and McManus’s team also supplemented Capodanno into the race on Monday.
“We’d love to go with her [Limerick Lace] if the ground is okay. They need a drop of rain over there at the minute and Haydock can dry out very quick,” said Berry.
Initial bookmaker reaction was to make Dan Skelton’s Grey Dawning a 7-4 favourite to successfully make the leap from novice class with Capodanno as short as 5-1 in some lists.
Skelton said of Grey Dawning: “He is proven around Haydock which is a big plus, and he has stayed the trip already at Warwick. He is a Grade One winner and carries through top form from last year as a novice. I’ve never ducked the situation that he has got to come up now to their level, to Grade One level in open company. But I feel he can do it.”
He added: “We want to go down the Gold Cup route. That’s how you start out hoping and the racecourse will tell you whether that’s realistic or not.
“Protektorat [2022 Betfair winner] won a Grade One as a novice at Aintree and Grey Dawning won his Grade One novice at Cheltenham. He was a bit over the top when he went to Aintree. He has been beaten before and is not one of those horses that only has ones next to his name. He can get beat and he can come back from it.
“While Saturday is very important, we are not going there apprehensive in any way. We are going there excited with a really good horse.”
Shark Hanlon’s Hewick is also still in contention to line up for a contest won by Henry De Bromhead’s subsequent Gold Cup hero A Plus Tard in 2021. Gold Tweet, a former Cleeve Hurdle winner, is a rare French contender.
Tuesday’s domestic action is in Limerick where Spricklestown, a sister to the top-class Banbridge, is rated to secure a valuable winning bracket in the opening maiden hurdle.
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