Equinties - Cheltenham changes

Gm Equinauts

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Let’s dive in.

HEADLINE ROUNDUP

YOU’RE BANNED

The annual Racing Victoria tradition of failing an Aidan O’Brien-trained Melbourne Cup contender continued yesterday, as SCANDINAVIA, this year’s St Leger hero, was ruled out of the world’s richest handicap.

Reports from Australia on Tuesday afternoon suggested that the Classic winner had failed the strict vets tests, but interestingly, nothing in the Racing Post (or any other UK-based media outlet) have reported this.

The news coming from down under is that O’Brien was full steam ahead to send SCANDINAVIA to the Melbourne Cup, but once the horse was scanned, he went on to change his mind without much reasoning.

Fair enough. We can easily put two and two together here, but even if this is just pure speculation, there’s no denying the fact that he definitely will not be heading to Australia this year.

The good thing to hear is that he will stay in training for at least next year, and this is something we expected to see.

KYPRIOS is enjoying retired life and ILLINOIS was very poor in the Irish St Leger (and he has shown his limitations in the big staying races). The Ballydoyle camp has an opening in its roster for a proper stayer to take control, so could that be SCANDINAVIA?

He is certainly unexposed, there is no doubting that. Ever since his Bahrain Trophy win, he has been pretty deadly, and he just finds and finds.
In the Queen’s Vase and the Leger, he was came off the bridle early, yet he found plenty for pressure. He couldn’t quite get there at Royal Ascot, but there’s no denying what he did at Doncaster, so in the range of things he could do next season, being a potential Gold Cup winner is a possibility.

However, this is no certainty. After all, the furthest he’s been is two miles at Goodwood, and that is a completely different universe to 2m4f around Ascot.
Yes, he could be a Gold Cup horse for next season, and he will be campaigned that way, but if he doesn’t stay, he simply won’t be able to down a horse like TRAWLERMAN, assuming Godolphin’s star stayer is still at his best next year.
Anyway, it’s a shame he’s not going to Australia, but the potential of him being a Gold Cup horse next year is interesting.

CHELTENHAM CHANGES

Well, Guy Lavender has well and truly arrived as the CEO is Cheltenham Racecourse.
He may have been appointed in August 2024, but after spending some time to find his feet, he made his first big move as the boss of the UK’s most important racetrack, and, of course, these fresh changes involved the Cheltenham Festival.

So, what are the alterations he and the Prestbury Park team have made? We’ll go through this one by one, with our opinions on each.

Firstly, the famous price of a pint Guinness… (and all draught pints actually. They’ve been reduced, so a pint of the black stuff now costs £7.50, rather than £7.80. This is obviously a nice addition, but it’s not ground-breaking. What is going to make you want to come to the Festival? An extra 30p in your pocket per pint of drink, or ticket prices being reduced by £10-20? It’s the latter, obviously, but this won’t happen.

If we want to value the Cheltenham Festival on the same level as other major sporting events throughout the year, unfortunately, the prices paid to see this experience in real life will be similar to those paid for a football match or music festival. That’s just the reality of life.

Elsewhere, Lavendar has scrapped the drinks restrictions on where you can and can’t carry your pint of alcohol on course. This is the big win. It makes the life of racegoers so much easier as they don’t have to down their pint before leaving the bar, which should free up more space in the bars.

They are also set to add more food vendors and bars to the racecourse for the Festival, which should make buying things quicker. We would suggest they should have reduced food prices too though as a slice of pizza costs you a small mortgage when there. Maybe that’s asking too much?

Next, attendances have now been capped at 66,000 instead of 68,500. There will be a section of racegoers that don’t want a busy Festival, but then they’ll also complain when not enough people come to jump racing’s Olympics (make it make sense).

This new attendance cap will only affect Gold Cup Day, and maybe Champions Tuesday, because Wednesday has had a shocking attendance over the last two years, and Thursday’s attendance usually isn’t much better.

Maybe 2,500 fewer in Prestbury Park will make Gold Cup Day more bearable? Let’s be honest, really honest, there is absolutely nothing worse that being crammed into the Guinness village amidst a mob who all wear piss-soaked tweed jackets, dropping beer farts, the smell of which could strip paint off a wall. Just our view!

Cheltenham have also decided to bring back Ladies Day instead of Style Wednesday to try and encourage a few more people to the racecourse. Will this add an extra 10,000 paying punters? We’ll let you work this one out.

These are the only real ‘big’ changes for next year’s Festival, and on the whole, they should be pretty decent. We do have our own suggestions though. Firstly, on the ticket prices, why don’t they have a good deal for multiple days? York have it, Chepstow have introduced it for their jumps season opener, and you can attend both days of the Hennessy meeting at Newbury for £42, rather than £32 per day. Apparently, for the first three days of the meeting, they have a bit of a discount, but the discount only applies to the second day purchased and not the first.

Yes, the Cheltenham Festival is the Jockey Club’s biggest money maker of the whole year, so lowering ticket prices might be a big detriment to their profit margins, however if they keep squeezing the life out of their customers, soon, they won’t have any people coming to the Festival, and then they will be in a pickle. The Festival should be a desirable meeting to attend, not a chore.

The second thing is that no changes will be made to the racing product for the 2026 Festival. Having made chances to last year’s renewal, this is no real surprise, but it seems like these on-the-track alterations will come into effect next year.

We imagine the Mares’ Hurdle will get a proper look at, and we hope they do something about the novice hurdles. Three is quite a lot, and the Supreme & Turners can detract from one another.

Anyway, that’s all the times we’ll mention the C word in today’s edition.

EARLY TARGETS

We’re not going to talk about the Festival again, but we will keep on the topic of our jumps, because we’re wondering just how expensive the Charlie Hall Chase victory party was last year after THE REAL WHACKER won. There must have been a fair few bottles of Ribena drank, because Patrick Neville, his trainer, declared for bankruptcy at a court hearing last month.

We’re kidding about the after party, of course. Neville filed for personal bankruptcy because he failed to pay back a €110,000 loan from his former assistant trainer, Rebecca Dennis. Whoops.

Anyway, THE REAL WHACKER, who Dennis owns a quarter of, is back in training, and he has his eyes firmly on the Charlie Hall Chase at Wetherby in early November.
Neville is certainly not hiding his plan to head back to Wetherby. The nine-year-old has been declared for a handicap hurdle at Perth on Thursday, and this will surely be nothing more than a prep run. We love plotting.

Speaking of prep races, Jamie Snowden is set to use the Charlie Hall Chase as a sighter for GA LAW, with his big pre-Christmas target being the Coral Gold Cup. Snowden hasn’t explicitly said the Charlie Hall is a “prep”, but he shouldn’t really win an open Graded race on his first start of the season, and the contest should set him up perfectly for the Hennessy at Newbury. Snowden thinks another year on his back has made him a touch slower, so three miles will be more up his street.

RISK ON

13.40 SHES GOT THE BLUES

This girl finally gets the cut he probably has been crying out for and this is a bad race. The useful claimer in Warran Fentiman takes off 5lbs which really helps her chances against the boys today. 15/2 a small ew.

14.50 INISHBEG

Probably needed the race lto but we’ve heard this guy is pretty good so we’re taking on the well backed Burke horse. 6/4.

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