Inside racing (From The Northern Echo)

Inside racing

10:54am Monday 15th March 2010 in

• Skip social links
• Print
• Email
• Comments(0)

IT’S that time of the year again. Tomorrow at 1.30 the talking stops and the Cheltenham Festival gets underway.

It’s the most important four days of the year for jump fans and tomorrow’s highlight, the Champion Hurdle, looks fiercely competitive with 12 runners going to post, including last year’s winner Punjabi.

Out of the four feature races, this has the most wide open look to it, but trainer Nicky Henderson has a strong chance of keeping up his fine run in the race. As well as last year’s winner he also saddles Zaynar, who will be ridden by Yorkshire-born Andrew Tinkler and Binocular, who is due to be partnered by champion jockey A P McCoy.

Wednesday’s feature, The Queen Mother Champion Chase, is headed by Master Minded, who is looking for his third win in the race, but he faces a serious threat in Kalahari King, who was ultra impressive when winning at Doncaster last month on his seasonal reappearance.

Trained in West Witton by Ferdy Murphy, the nineyear- old has run well at the track before and is fancied to lift the prestigious prize.

The World Hurdle is the big one on Thursday and Big Bucks will be odds on to repeat last year’s victory for Paul Nicholls and Ruby Walsh. But it will be no walk in the park with some decent opposition, particularly the Howard Johnson trained Tidal Bay.

The nine-year-old was a winner a couple of years ago at the Festival in the Arkle Trophy, but the trainer’s decision to bring him back over hurdles paid dividends when he was successful in the Betfair Cleeve Hurdle over course and distance at the end of January.

The Festival comes to an astounding climax on Friday with the clash of the year in the Cheltenham Gold Cup due off at 3.20.

Kauto Star and Denman, both trained by Paul Nicholls, have dominated the race the last three years.

Kauto is 2-1 up at present and the bookmakers are confident he will add another win to his already amazing CV.

Ruby Walsh will be on board again while A P McCoy will take the ride on Denman.