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From the King George to the Gold Cup I'd bet that Exotic can haul in Kauto

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Simon Rowlands finds reasons to doubt Kauto Star's supremacy - at the likely odds anyway...

Call me contrary if you like (I'd probably only regard it as a compliment), but I have come to the conclusion that Kauto Star's chance of winning the Cheltenham Gold Cup in March is questionable at just the time that a lot of other people seem to have decided they can't see beyond him.

Cast your mind back to Gold Cup day earlier this year. The doubts concerning Kauto Star were not whether he was good enough (he was and still is) but whether his jumping would stand up to it (it did and probably will do again) and whether he would stay beyond three miles.

Among the understandable clamour to hail a great horse winning a great race (though it was not a great performance to beat Turpin Green by five lengths and Monkerhostin by ten) it seems to have been forgotten by many that Kauto Star's stamina was scarcely tested at all.

They went what used to be known, in the day's before civil partnerships and common-law living, as "a married man's gallop". The sectional until three out, relative to the overall time, was the slowest for a Gold Cup in the all the years I have been recording such figures: a pedestrian 85.96% of the overall time.

Last season's Gold Cup was a test of speed: it suited Kauto Star admirably, and yet the second, Exotic Dancer, was coming back at him at the line despite having been repeatedly hampered.

Kauto Star met Exotic Dancer again on Saturday at Haydock and beat him again. But this time the trip of the Betfair Chase was nearly half a mile short of the Gold Cup distance. The race was run on soft ground and at a strong pace and Kauto Star was hanging on at the death, to my eyes, with just half a length to spare. It was an excellent performance, no doubt, but then so was that of the second.

A strong pace and/or testing ground could well put Kauto Star in severe trouble at Cheltenham in March, and Exotic Dancer, for one, will have sound prospects of beating him. At Betfair odds of [3.15] on Kauto Star and [8.8] on Exotic Dancer I simply have to get with the latter.

Kauto Star may well be a more appealing lay proposition after the King George - a race over three miles on a flat track that will play to his strengths again - at Kempton on Boxing Day. He is the likeliest winner of that race, and priced accordingly at [2.04] on Betfair, but you won't find me siding with him at such a skinny price this time around.

There's a lot of water to flow under the bridge between now and March, and I'll be hoping for a significant amount of it to fall at Prestbury Park as well.

***

Every Tom, Dick and Harry seems to have had a go at "proving" just how tough a fence the second-last at Cheltenham is on the Old Course. Some have even managed to miss the blindingly obvious fact that it is the number of fallers compared to the number of jumpers at a fence that matters and not the number of fallers compared to the number of runners that started the race.

In order to provide another illustration of this principle, I looked at the last 15 runnings of the Hennessy Cognac Gold Cup, the highlight of this coming Saturday's Newbury card.

The most striking thing is that there have been lots of pulled-ups but few fallers, unseateds and brought downs. No fence has claimed more such departures, however, than the third of the 21 obstacles, but in terms of attrition rate it is the third-last and the last itself that have done most damage (please note, in-running punters). There are fewer runners still standing at that point you see.

And what will win the race? I am more than a little hopeful that New Alco will do the business. He's a horse who has yet to race beyond three miles and be ridden from the front, and he promises to be very well suited by it. He seems to have been around for ages and yet is still only six and reaching his prime. Even at [7.0] (from a high of [95] and, no, it wasn't me) he looks worth an interest.

What do you think?