Beef Or Salmon must hit top gear in Lexus
That doesn’t necessarily mean he needs to actually go and beat Best Mate, but the rising nine-year-old really does have to give the triple Cheltenham Gold Cup winner one hell of a fight.
Someone said to me the other day that there’s no point thinking Beef Or Salmon can win a Gold Cup because there’s always some excuse for him.
An exaggeration, yes, but you can still see exactly from where he is coming. Essentially, Beef Or Salmom has failed three big tests, the Gold Cup twice and in last year’s Lexus, then the Ericsson.
There were genuine reasons in all cases. He took a crashing fall in his first Gold Cup and had a hugely interrupted preparation for the second.
In between, he couldn’t possibly have been anywhere near right, running way below his form in the Ericsson.
We had to look for excuses as well for his latest defeat, this time in the John Durkan Memorial at Punchestown, where he was most disappointing in only managing a remote third behind Kicking King.
But again his preparation was less than ideal, missing several pieces of vital work on the lead-up to the race, after suffering an overreach at Down Royal on his seasonal debut.
Following Beef Or Salmon’s impressive success in the James Nicholson at Down Royal you could have had 6-4 Best Mate for the Lexus.
Bookmakers were happy to go that price, on the basis that Beef Or Salmon was now a contender of real merit, both for the Lexus and then the Gold Cup.
But the 6-4 has long disappeared. The layers, understandably, rushed Best Mate to long odds-on, simply because there were just too many question marks against Beef Or Salmon.
So can Beef Or Salmon finally lay the Best Mate ghost and beat him for the first time in what will be their fourth meeting?
There is some evidence to suggest Best Mate may be at the start of a downward spiral! For instance, he was flat to the boards to beat two slow horses in the Gold Cup in March, Sir Rembrandt and Harbour Pilot.
Connections of Beef Or Salmon can take comfort from the fact that their charge was only beaten three and a half lengths in fourth, after a bad blunder at the last and having gone into the contest very much under a cloud.
As well, Best Mate’s reappearance was far from impressive, struggling to beat Seebald a short head at Exeter. He was then rated 19lbs superior to his rival and only had to concede 4lbs on the day.
It is interesting as well to note that it is a long time, prior to last March in fact, since Terry Biddlecombe uttered any words about Best Mate being on a par, or better, than Arkle.
Whatever you might think of Biddlecombe, he’s no fool, comparison with Arkle aside, and knows that beating Sir Rembrandt and Harbour Pilot, in the way that Best Mate did, wouldn’t entitle the champion to be put into the same field as the great one.
In any case, the bottom line is that Best Mate is tried and trusted and has done it all. It is now or never for Beef Or Salmon.
We will surely be able to conclude, come Tuesday evening, that he is a potential Gold Cup winner, or that his challenge all along has been so much hot air.
Besides the Lexus, the other contest I am particularly looking forward to at Leopardstown is Sunday’s Grade One Durkan New Homes Novice ’Chase.
This will see the second appearance over fences of Christy Roche’s Like-A-Butterfly. She will be 11 come January 1, but seemed to have lost none of her enthusiasm when making a tremendous return to the game, following a long absence, with a powerful display at Naas in November, where she won hard held after jumping brilliantly.
And while on the subject of this contest, it has to be said Boylesports’ betting on the contest, as shown in Tuesday’s Racing Post, left plenty to be desired.
This was the offer: 5-4 Like-Butterfly, 3-1 Mariah Rollins, 7-2 Newmill, 5-1 Kahuna, Ned Kelly, 8-1 Sir Oj, 10-1 Tiger Cry, 16-1 bar.
On the horses quoted that comes to in excess of 140% and nothing short of daylight robbery.
Noel Meade’s Harchibald rates a bit of a good thing in Sunday’s Stan James Christmas Hurdle at Kempton.
More power to Meade for exploiting what has the makings of another mighty pay-day. This flat track will be absolutely ideal for Harchibald.
But as a Champion Hurdle trial it will surely be meaningless. Kempton and Cheltenham are just poles apart.
