L'Eau Du Sud sinks Jonbon with stylish Shloer success
GREY DAY: L'eau Du Sud en route to winning the Shloer Chase at Cheltenham on Friday. Picture: Mike Egerton/PA
Dan Skelton's L'Eau Du Sud turned the Shloer Chase into a procession when running out a wide-margin winner over the hat-trick-seeking Jonbon at Cheltenham.
Run in howling wind and rain, there was nowhere to hide, as Matata, Jonbon, and the eventual winner never gave each other any peace.
That might have been setting it up for one to come from behind, but Libberty Hunter was an early faller and Edwardstone never looked like getting involved.
Harry Skelton on the eventual 100-30 winner was keen there was to be no let up and cruised upsides as if to prove how well he was going, and a few slow leaps soon meant Jonbon was on the back foot.
Coming down the hill Skelton allowed himself a long look over his shoulder but in the gathering gloom he was so far clear of Jonbon he may not have seen him.
L'Eau Du Sud breezed on by Matata turning in and was allowed to coast home in his own time. JJ Slevin worked wonders to stay on Matata after a bad mistake at the last, but it cost him second, allowing Jonbon to maintain his record of never finishing outside the first two but 15 lengths adrift.
Dan Skelton said: "Maybe the conditions have made him look really good today, but we got him ready for today as we needed to know where he stands. Whether he got beat by Jonbon or not we were hopeful today was a career best, and it was.
"I was hoping we could take the step forward, but you can never be sure. Looking at today he's clearly improved "I'm not very proud of myself for running at Warwick in the Kingmaker before the Arkle as it took a lot out of him and that's why he wasn't at his best at Cheltenham. I didn't want to say it at the time as it would have sounded like an excuse, but that's in the past and hopefully we can make it up now.
"I'm not afraid of running novices and they have to go out and run to learn what to do. Maybe those defeats in the spring have helped turn him into the man he has become today and of course there are positives to it all.
"We'll look forward to the future now with a real good two-miler now. He'll go straight to the Tingle Creek and maybe after last year straight to the Champion Chase. I wouldn't leave the door completely shut on the Clarence House at Ascot, but he's had a harder race than it looked today because that ground is pretty hard work."
He added: "It was probably hard to foresee that and I thought we could win but we needed an under-performance from Jonbon and I think that's what we saw, he didn't travel like him. He's not getting any younger and I think you'll see a different Jonbon at Sandown now he's blown the cobwebs away."
On Jonbon, Nicky Henderson said: "He may have lost a battle, but the war is in three weeks' time.
"This race was much hotter than it was in previous years, but I don't think you can just say Cheltenham is his bogey because it is not.
"He has won this the last two years, but it's never his most impressive performance of the season first time out — he's got away with it the last two years but by the time you get to Sandown, brilliant.
"It's three weeks away and that's not far away and if they re-ran this race in two weeks' time you couldn't go anyway. We got this run under his belt and as much as we didn't want to do it in this ground we had to do it to get to Sandown — we had to do it.
"It's quite a big gap to bridge, but we know where the improvement has come from before and I have no doubt there will be some invasion coming over from Ireland as well we'll have to consider."
