Timeform’s Phil Turner reflects on a dramatic King George at Kempton and Sir Gino’s triumphant return in the Christmas Hurdle.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m pleased we were able to enjoy such a thrilling Ladbrokes King George VI Chase but when it comes to analysing it, you have to say it was a very muddling race.<\/p>\n
Put it this way, I think you could run it five times at a similar pace and get possibly five different winners. I don\u2019t tend to like that in my championship races but having said that, they were all top-class horses fighting out the finish with four in line jumping the last.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m sure they were all somewhere near the top of their ability on the day too but I just feel if you\u2019re a connection of a beaten horse or backed one of the next three home, then you might well have been thinking there was a hard-luck story somewhere and you\u2019d love to have another crack at it.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s unusual for a Grade One but to put some numbers on it The Jukebox Man<\/a> is now 167p with Timeform. Banbridge<\/a> 167, Gaelic Warrior<\/a> is still rated above that pair on 170 and Jango Baie<\/a> is on 166.<\/p>\n We\u2019ve left Fact To File<\/a> on 170 but he obviously has a bit to prove now. He\u2019s only won once from six starts since landing last season\u2019s John Durkan. He\u2019s always had a huge reputation, and there are a couple of performances, notably in last season\u2019s Ryanair, where he\u2019s looked a world-beater.<\/p>\n But the number of defeats is just creeping up now. I wonder if he was the one to have been affected by the hard race he and Gaelic Warrior had in this year’s John Durkan on their reappearances. That might have left a mark more than it did on his stablemate although having said that he wasn\u2019t in the ideal position when the race really began to take shape either.<\/p>\n The horse who was \u2013 and throughout the race too \u2013 was The Jukebox Man and big credit for that goes to Ben Jones<\/a> who sat just off Il Est Francais which meant he didn\u2019t have to get out from behind him when that rival started to fall away.<\/p>\n That happened a little to Gaelic Warrior and while the jockey gets plenty of praise, so too does The Jukebox Man who barely touched a twig on the way around there. That jumping will stand him in good stead in the other big races to come while he showed a lot of courage and gumption to pull it out of the fire late on having briefly dropped to third on the run-in.<\/p>\n Don’t forget he was up against three horses in that finish who were all Grade One winners at two miles and he’s very much been a stayer from early on his career, that reflects very well on him. That\u2019s why he still has the p.<\/p>\n Paul Townend briefly seemed to get unbalanced on Gaelic Warrior on the run-in, and without making a bad mistake Jango Baie didn\u2019t land running at the second last. They\u2019re small things but in a race like this when they\u2019re all bunched up on the home turn, those small things become big things.<\/p>\n So it was all a bit messy but the horses involved in the finish are all top-class performers and you can make a case for several of them for the big races at Cheltenham in March.<\/p>\n Gino posts career-best figure<\/p>\n And clearly that\u2019s the case now too with Sir Gino, winner of the Ladbrokes Christmas Hurdle<\/a> and favourite for the Unibet Champion Hurdle at Cheltenham.<\/p>\n He actually posted his best Timeform performance at Kempton \u2013 he\u2019s up to 163p and the only horse who\u2019s been out this season who\u2019s rated above him in the two-mile hurdling division is a certain Constitution Hill, who is on 166x but goodness knows if he\u2019ll A) be able to run to that again, B) manage to complete, or C) whether we\u2019ll even see him hurdling again. <\/p>\n Sir Gino<\/a> has been there twice as a replacement for him in Grade One hurdles and won both. We wrote a piece on Sporting Life last week about chasers going back hurdling and the fact there’s a different technique involved.<\/p>\n He looks like a chaser, has the build of a chaser and even when he\u2019s jumping well over hurdles he\u2019s more like a chaser doing it but the key thing to take out of the race is that they just couldn\u2019t go quick enough for him and he looked in a league of his own from a very early stage.<\/p>\n He just wanted to go quicker than the rest and may prove a similar case to another former Christmas Hurdle winner in Faugheen who was also bought to be a chaser, coming as he did from a point-to-point background.<\/p>\n Unusually for a top-class two-mile hurdler, Faugheen never used to jump particularly well. He\u2019d often flatten one on the way round and while Sir Gino is a much better jumper than he was, I just wonder if he\u2019s another case of a horse who is just too good, who has so much ability that he won\u2019t need to be a traditional slick jumping, champion hurdler to win at Cheltenham in what might be a sub-standard year.<\/p>\n If you look at Golden Ace<\/a>, for all she\u2019s been lucky to win her two recent Grade Ones, she\u2019s still among the top six two-mile hurdlers around and he\u2019s seen her off with ease.<\/p>\n He\u2019s definitely the one to beat in that division and it was great to se him back with all the old ability still intact after such a major health scare in the spring.<\/p>\n More from Sporting LifeSafer gambling<\/p>\n We are committed in our support of safer gambling. Recommended bets are advised to over-18s and we strongly encourage readers to wager only what they can afford to lose.<\/p>\n If you are concerned about your gambling, please call the National Gambling Helpline \/ GamCare<\/a> on 0808 8020 133.<\/p>\n Further support and information can be found at begambleaware.org<\/a> and gamblingtherapy.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Timeform’s Phil Turner reflects on a dramatic King George at Kempton and Sir Gino’s triumphant return in the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":212891,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":["post-212890","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212890","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=212890"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212890\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/212891"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=212890"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=212890"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=212890"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}