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Cheltenham Head-to-Heads: Champion Chase
/ Graham Cunningham / 09 March 2010 / Leave a comment Free £25 Bet
Master Minded dominates the Champion Chase betting at a shade under even money but both Graham and Will are keen on another horse in the market
Graham Cunningham: One of the good things about this year's Champion Chase is that we have a couple of high-class chasers who have gradually risen through the ranks to earn a first crack at the mighty Master Minded.
But, whichever way you slice it, both of them will have to take a significant step forward if the double M is on his game.
All concerned with Twist Magic seem to feel he is "a different horse this year." He'll plainly need to be having been stuffed in the last two renewals and it's also worth noting that he has been beaten on all his last five runs without Reubens in the saddle.
Forpadydeplasterer and Kalahari King are extremely closely matched on last year's Arkle form, but which one has made the greater progress since?
The form book suggests that the double K is the safer option based on his emphatic success in a hot Donny handicap off a mark of 157 and, given how Ferdy Murphy tends to get horses to peak in March, I wouldn't argue with anyone who suggests that Kalahari King is the each way alternative to the favourite.
However, Master Minded seemed to put memories of that errant reappearance well behind him in the Game Spirit Chase at Newbury. If he's in the sort of form he showed to blitz his rivals in this race two years ago then the rest are playing for places.
And even if he's in the form he showed to score by "just" seven lengths last year -which seems highly likely - then those who are trying to lay him at a shade under even money will be cruising for a Champion Chase bruising.
Will Hayler: My instinct with odds-on favourites at the Cheltenham Festival is nearly always to try and find a way to get them beaten. Perhaps that's a weakness with my punting - it certainly has been with Master Minded for the last two years.
His performance in winning the race two years ago was mindblowing. He destroyed an on-song Voy Por Ustedes with astonishing ease, earning a rating of 186. But that isn't a mark he's ever quite managed to live up to since, not in this race 12 months ago or when scrambling home from Big Zeb at Punchestown afterwards. His well-publicised rib injury afterwards was undoubtedly no red herring and he was much more like his old self when winning the Game Spirit. The old gait was there again, the same zest, the way he holds his tail high while he accelerates away. But on the formbook alone a victory over the clumsy
Mahogany Blaze, a disappointing Fix The Rib and a pale imitation of the old Voy Por Ustedes does not a Champion make and I can just about resist the [1.94] for now.
At anything over [2.0], I'm much keener on backing Kalahari King to finish in the first three and he's not without appeal at [6.4] on the win market. Ferdy Murphy isn't always the best friend of the Betfair punter and his attempts to legitimise the way a couple of his team were campaigned earlier in the season didn't do him any favours, but he's undoubtedly a very talented trainer who time and again has shown that he can bring his team to the Festival primed to bely their odds.
It's a matter for dispute exactly how revved-up Kalahari King was for his reappearance at Doncaster last month, but even if he wasn't quite as much in need of the race as Murphy was suggesting beforehand, any handicap-winning performance off a mark of 157 deserves credit. With the ground likely to be in his favour and with course form to his name, he looks by far the most credible challenger to the favourite and I want to be with him.
