Half dozen of JP's - one shifty fish may have slipped through
Jockey Derek O'Connor celebrates with Inothewayurthinkin after winning the Kim Muir Handicap Chase on day three of the Cheltenham Racing Festival at Prestbury Park in Cheltenham, England. Pic: Harry Murphy/Sportsfile
In today’s fraught geo-political landscape there is something comforting about watching a likeable and respected billionaire spending his money on a relatable passion which adds some gaiety to the world. JP McManus is national hunt racing’s greatest source of funding, he loves Cheltenham and from dozens of runners this week here are six that could get this famously quiet man talking loudly.
"My phone rang eight times before twelve o'clock," explained the Tipperary trainer Miguel Gunn recently, "to be honest, my head was fried with all the calls, but it was a very nice problem to have.”
Gunn’s ‘nice problem’ was caused by the performance of his debutant Aqua Force in a Gowran Park bumper last month when she destroyed a strong looking field by twenty-eight lengths.
Small trainers often need to sell their good horses to thrive and survive and several owners often have big cheque books with which to buy them. JP McManus has one of the biggest, his purchase of Aqua Force was speedily concluded, and the six-year-old mare is now cosily ensconced at Willie Mullin’s five-star digs in Closutton.
The question now is whether her Gowran performance was just too good to be true, but JP wanted a runner in Wednesday's bumper and now he has one. The price the great man paid for the mare is undisclosed, but payback is bound to take a while. It could start in the last race on Wednesday.
Another festival runner having his first outing in the famous green and gold hooped colours is The New Lion (13/8) who takes on Final Demand in the Turner’s Novice Hurdle, also on Wednesday. If both these novices are as good as they seem, then this could be the race of the week. JP bought the six-year-old gelding for a rumoured £1 million following his impressive win in the Challow Hurdle at Newbury at the turn of the year and although that race is a woeful indicator of festival success, this year could be an exception.
Four of the six horses behind The New Lion that day have won since so it might be a deeper race than it looked at the time and his trainer, Dan Skelton, is finding it tough to contain his excitement over his horse’s potential, remarking recently; “I love everything about him, his attitude, his trainability. He has just got it, and we love him. Hopefully, we can have a nice smooth run and what will be will be.”
To put it mildly, McManus has long been known as a man to enjoy a flutter from time to time and to put it even milder, Lady Luck often smiles sweetly upon him when he decides to go deep. Watching his assaults on the bookies can be great craic and the heavily backed Inothewayurthinkin cantering from last to first in the Kim Muir Chase off a rating of 145 in 2024, at least a stone well in, was a case in point.
Belying his horse's name, trainer Gavin Cromwell didn’t quite know the way he was thinking himself until last week when a particularly impressive piece of work led him to convince JP to open his wallet, again, and fork out €30,000 for a supplementary entry for the Gold Cup on Friday. He’s entered the betting as third favourite at around 7/1 behind Galopin Des Champs and Banbridge which looks skinny enough given he has been an average of 18 lengths behind Galopin in three starts this season to date. However, some horses just perform better in the springtime and Inothewayurthinkin could be one of them and went on to a Grade One at Aintree after his festival success last year.
Another McManus horse who has wintered with an uncertain schedule is the Willie Mullins-trained, Fact To File. Willie uses all the time available to him before finalising running decisions, but this time last year it appeared that it was the Gold Cup for certain this year for the season’s finest staying novice chaser. As with Florida Pearl, Mullins had chosen to bypass a hurdling career with Fact To File and when he won the Brown Advisory last year, he remarked that “he's just a real gentleman of a horse, and definitely a Gold Cup horse in the making.”
That ‘making’ might take a year longer than he thought at the time. Another victim of Galopin Des Champs in his latest two starts he has been rerouted to the Ryanair Chase on Thursday over the shorter distance of two-mile five. Although there is no Galopin in the field, it is still far from a penalty kick for the 6/4 favourite. The French raider, Il Est Francais, is a spectacular front runner and will test the jumping of his pursuers to their absolute limit. Add his enigmatic stablemate, Gaelic Warrior, and last year’s winner Protekorat to the mix means that this will be a hard race to win.
Unlike Aqua Force and The New Line, the price JP paid for Jonbon is in the public domain. The full brother to the peerless chaser Douvan sold for over €600,000 following a point win at Dromahane when he was four. He has won over twice that amount back since by winning 17 of 20 starts since, but there is a gaping hole remaining on his CV. He has yet to win at the Cheltenham festival where he has twice been a runner up.
He was beaten a long way when second to Constitution Hill three years ago in the Supreme Novices Hurdle, but he would have needed the speed of an F16 jet fighter to win that day. He encountered another hot one when beaten by El Fabiolo in the Arkle a year later. Like most of Nicky Henderson’s team he bypassed last season’s festival on health grounds so the increasingly likeable nine-year-old has his best chance yet in Wednesday's Champion Chase. Although odds-on favourites have not a great record recently, Jonbon is by far the most likely, and most deserving, winner of this year’s two-mile chasing championship.
The entry conditions for Grade One handicaps have been tightened over the last couple of years to reduce the chances of unexposed future champions getting into festival races with unrealistically light weights. Think Rory McIlroy rocking up for the Sunday medal playing off six. Known as the ‘State Man’ rule, it increases the minimum number of runs from three to four to give the handicappers more information on which to base their assessments of a horse’s true chances.
Despite the new stipulation, a shifty fish may have slipped through the tighter net this week. Kopeck De Mee will run in either the County or Martin Pipe Hurdle on Friday off 136, and time may yet prove this to be a couple of stone less than he should have carried.
He meets the entry stipulations due to his four starts in France and was bought by JP following an impressive win at Auteuil last May and sent to Willie Mullins, who unsurprisingly has confined him to barracks since. His French trainer, Joel Boisnard, described his as “a crack performer, quite simply. He would have been a champion around Auteuil.”
Kopeck is trading at around 3/1 for both his entries this week but the 50/1 on offer for next year’s Champion Hurdle might prove a more intelligent investment. That price is sure to be slashed if he wins this week.
