Cheltenham Preview

With apologies to those who come here for poetry reviews, I do like to have my once a year foray into horse race journalism.

If horse racing still had any hopes of remaining a sport in the mainstream of public interest then this year's Gold Cup would be all over the media with the decider between Kauto Star and Denman grabbing their imagination by the scruff of the neck.

The fact that it doesn't appear to be doing so is partly to do with the fact that horse racing has somehow become divorced from 'sport' in general and is less and less even a bookmaker's main line of business but also because Denman fell when under pressure from his new jockey, A.P. McCoy, at Newbury in his prep race. Thus, he doesn't quite look like as big a challenge to Kauto Star (pictured) as we thought and Kauto goes to Cheltenham looking as if a clear round will be enough to confirm him the best chaser since Arkle, a comparison that even I am not old enough to be able to make.

But at 8/11, Kauto is no more of a betting proposition than he has ever been. It would be great to see Denman, a truly great horse in his own right, and a very different one, at his best giving the beautifully athletic Kauto a proper race and he still might but it is a prospect to enjoy as sport rather than investment.

Reports of a training setback for Punchestowns last week made Nicky Henderson's two leading prospects for the RSA Chase change places at the top of the betting and suddenly made the 5/1 I took about Long Run look very astute indeed because now he's 5/2 at best. So, I'm hoping I feel just as clever next Thursday tea-time and Long Run is this year's nap selection as yet again we try to put together a treble.

We've been close before. This year, with so many of the big races having odds-on favourites, it might be easy to string together Kauto, Master Minded, Big Bucks and Dunguib into a penalty kick accumulator but there's no value in that and it's not big or clever.

Of the short priced certainties, Big Bucks in the World Hurdle would look like the most cast iron but is only included for the apparent lack of opposition and to hold a treble together, not because 4/7 is a price to steam in at.

As well as the RSA Chase, the Champion Hurdle is a favourite race of mine but this year's renewal doesn't look like vintage. It was not encouraging to read Paul Carberry today quoted as saying that he will be delivering Go Native late. It is still, so many years after the fact, possible to wake up screaming at his ride on Harchibald, jumping the last as if he was deciding how many lengths to win by. It might not have cost me much but I'm on prescription tablets now. So I won't be investing much on the Champion Hurdle this year, thank you very much.

It might be worth turning to some of the newer races, the more reliable and well-advised innovations used to extend the festival to 4 money-spinning days rather than the more intense 3. You could go for Garde Champetre in the cross country but it's a novelty sort of race better done in the Czech Republic, so I'd rather suggest the Irish banker Quevega in the mares hurdle, currently 5/4, or the big news story, the Queen's Barber Shop in the Ryanair Chase at 5/1, which is due a decent race of some sort and I hope this isn't too short a distance or price.

The main hope is, of course, that they all come home safely. And secondly that, having had dreams of windfalls, we none of us end up too much poorer. There are enough agencies trying to skin us these days without us offering bookmakers the chance to be another one.

But this year's treble will be Long Run, Big Bucks, Quevega and add Barber's Shop in for a four-timer.

I had to back Tricky Trickster for the National after his last run which was the best trial I've seen this year but took the 10/1 whereas now you can get 12. But I've stuck to my last year's guns, too, with Black Apalachi, whose form book preparation looks fine and he's shortened in price so that'll be the tip for Aintree, when horse racing still makes the news whatever happens.