Nicky Henderson’s stable in Lambourn seems likely to offer the only serious challenge to Irish dominance of the Cheltenham Festival in 2021 and beyond after the publication on Tuesday of the official ratings for the truncated 2019-20 National Hunt season.
Willie Mullins’s Al Boum Photo, the first horse to retain the Gold Cup since Best Mate in 2003, was the joint top-rated chaser alongside Paul Nicholls’s Cyrname, while Mullins’s Sharjah was the top-rated hurdler and Gordon Elliott, his biggest rival in Ireland, supplied the top novice hurdler in Envoi Allen.
Mullins and Elliott each saddled seven winners at Cheltenham in March, while Henry de Bromhead had two and Eugene O’Sullivan, from County Cork, sent out It Came To Pass to win the Foxhunters’ Chase at 66-1. Mullins and Elliott alone were responsible for four more winners than all of Great Britain’s National Hunt yards put together while Henderson, with four, had nearly half of Britain’s 10 wins.
Overall, the level of the ratings was disappointing, although the cancellation of both the Aintree and Punchestown festivals in April meant that many horses missed out on a further chance to impress.
For the first time since the jump ratings were first published at the end of the 1999-2000 season, no hurdler was rated above Sharjah’s mark of 164, while Al Boum Photo’s rating of 173 is a 2lb drop from 2018-19. Cyrname (173) overtook Altior, the previous two-mile champion over fences, despite failing to run up to his best in two starts after a memorable defeat of Altior at Ascot in November.
“Despite winning his second Gold Cup, Al Boum Photo did not run up to his official mark of 175,” Sandy Shaw, Ireland’s senior handicapper, said on Tuesday, “and the fact that little more than seven lengths covered the first six home would indicate that this year’s race wasn’t the strongest renewal.
“However, there is every chance that Al Boum Photo would have improved on this performance but for the abandonment of the [remaining] spring festivals, and his bid to emulate Best Mate’s three consecutive wins in the race will be eagerly awaited.”
Henderson will look to two of the leading novices – Champ (161), who came from a seemingly impossible position to win the RSA Chase, and Shishkin (159), the Supreme Novice Hurdle winner – to keep trading blows with Mullins and Elliott at the Festivals next spring, while Santini, the runner-up in the Gold Cup, should again be among the main rivals to Al Boum Photo in March.
One of the trickier tasks for the handicappers, meanwhile, was to put a rating on the heart-breaking performance of Goshen in the Triumph Hurdle. Gary Moore’s juvenile was well clear of his field and needed only to jump the last to secure an easy win, but his legs became caught up after the hurdle and he unseated his jockey, Jamie Moore.
Ripon
12.00 Brazen Belle 12.35 Zim Baby 1.10 Lismore 1.40 King’s Castle 2.10 Benadalid (nb) 2.40 River Dawn 3.10 Deep Snow 3.40 Oksana Astankova
Stratford-On-Avon
12.15 Dagueneau 12.45 Beat The Judge 1.20 Pogo I Am 1.50 Stamina Chope 2.20 Lough Har 2.50 Wisecracker 3.20 Solstalla 3.50 Flying Verse 4.20 Simply Mani
Newbury
4.40 Cairn Gorm 5.10 Ocean Eyes 5.40 Spirited Guest 6.10 Historic 6.40 Puerto Banus 7.10 Nova Roma 7.40 Annie De Vega 8.10 Sorrel (nap) 8.40 Persian Sun
Until last year, the handicappers did not give ratings to fallers, but Goshen has been given a mark of 157, 2lb behind Shishkin, on the – perhaps conservative – assumption that he would have won by five lengths.
“It was gut-wrenching,” Andrew Mealor, the BHA handicapper responsible for British hurdlers, said. “Goshen might have won by more than five lengths, we’ll never know, but the view we took was that he’d gone very hard between three out to the last. He was definitely the best juvenile hurdler we saw last year and all being well he’ll hopefully be back as a Champion Hurdle contender next year.”