Weekend tips: Presenting Percy can make winning start for Gordon Elliott
Presenting Percy remains a potential Gold Cup horse and can make a winning start to his season at Down Royal. Picture: Sportsfile
There are numerous races of real interest today in Down Royal but the focus is on the Grade 1 Ladbrokes Champion Chase, in which Delta Work, Presenting Percy and Chris’s Dream head a top-class field.
Presenting Percy, making his debut for Gordon Elliott, can get his season off to a winning start and, in the process, notch a first success since January 2019. He finished behind Delta Work in the Grade 1 Irish Gold Cup but may well have reversed that form at Cheltenham but for tipping up at the second-last when making significant late progress.
Although rising ten, he remains a potential Gold Cup horse and if Elliott can eke a little improvement from him, he will take beating in all the top staying chases this season in Ireland.
Although he won here on his chasing and seasonal debut in 2018, Delta Work has a modest record after a break and may need this outing and thus is overlooked.
With Henry De Bromhead’s team in such good form now, Chris’s Dream is respected, while Noel Meade’s Tout Est Permis, with the benefit of a recent run, could sneak into the frame.
Elliott can also take the Rainbow Communications Handicap Chase with Paranoid.
A winner over hurdles on his debut for his current stable, he returns to chasing today and looks well treated off a mark of 112. An imposing sort, he did well to win over hurdles, particularly over a trip too sharp, but back over fences and over three miles today he can make it two from two for current connections.
Tomorrow in Cork, Majestic Maid can take the Paddy Power Onside App Mares’ Maiden Hurdle for Michael and Paddy Kennedy. Winner of a Galway bumper in August of last year, she was far from disgraced in listed company on her next outing, or when third behind The Getaway Star afterwards.
She was pulled up on her hurdling debut, but that was in a Grade 3 event in March. She made her seasonal debut last month in Punchestown and found only Ruaille Buaille too good. That was a good starting point for the season, and she may not even have to build on it to make her mark over hurdles on this occasion.
The Paddy Power Cork Grand National is the feature on the card and Deadheat can continue his fine run by landing the spoils for the McParlans. A winner of two of his four outings this season, the half-brother to Great Field and Unexcepted likes to be dropped out early and delivered late to make his challenge.
In likely testing conditions over this three-and-a-half-mile trip, those tactics should work a treat and he can take this at the expense of Rocky’s Silver.
Dreal Deal should have no trouble completing his five-timer when he contests the WhatOddsPaddy Handicap Hurdle. Earlier this week, Ronan McNally’s five-year-old made a mockery of his revised handicap mark when winning under tomorrow’s rider, Maxine O’Sullivan, and the handicapper saw fit to put him up 28lbs for that victory.
Running so quickly gives him the advantage to make the most of a mark just 5lbs higher, and he can coast to a fifth consecutive success.
12:40 Quilixios
1:15 Ballyadam
1:50 Wolf Prince (nb)
2:25 Presenting Percy
3:00 Battleoverdoyen
3:35 Paranoid (nap)
4:10 Sir Gerhard
12:40 Glorious Zoff
1:15 He’s A Hardy Bloke
1:50 Gold Des Bois
2:25 Delta Work
3:00 Samcro
3:35 Cuneo
4:10 Vintage Prosseco
12:30 Metaphorical
1:00 King Of The Castle
1:30 Raise You (nb)
2:00 Silk Forest
2:35 Sheer Chance
3:05 Blackpoint
3:40 Persian Queen
12:30 Apollo Thirteen
1:00 Team Of Firsts
1:30 Laughifuwant
2:00 Miss Myers
2:35 Hector De Maris
3:05 In From The Cold
3:40 Smile At Me
12:40 Barney Stinson
1:10 King’s Vow
1:42 Majestic Maid (nap)
2:15 Ragnar Lodbrok
2:46 Home By The Lee
3:20 Deadheat
3:53 Dreal Deal
4:25 Brooklynn Glory
12:40 Christmas Jumper
1:10 Indiana Jones
1:42 Daphne Moon
2:15 Goodbye Someday
2:46 Heaven Help Us
3:20 Rocky’s Silver
3:53 Ellipsism
4:25 April’s Moon
