GOLD CUP HANDICAP CHASE
Saturday 28th October, 2:25pm
Monbeg Genius @ 7/2
Beauport @ 9/2
Eldorado Allen @ 13/2
Mucho Mas @ 7/1
Two For Gold @ 8/1
Yeah Man @ 11/1
view odds
*prices correct at time of writing.
RACE
Officials at Ascot hardly have time to catch their breath after British Champions Day before their NH season – only inaugurated at the Royal track in 1965 – is off and running with the Sodexo Live! Gold Cup (3-45) taking centre stage at the opening fixture. It’s a good old-fashioned, valuable and fiercely-competitive Saturday handicap staged over three miles.
MARKET
Every year as aficionados prepare their Ten or Twelve-to-Follow lists there’s one horse that almost everyone seems to be including, and in 2023 as far as I can see that’s Monbeg Genius, trained by Jonjo O’Neill and ridden in the Barrowman Racing silks by Jonjo O’Neill junior. With relative ease this seven-year-old, already 6-1 favourite with Fitzdares for the old Hennessy at Newbury, has galloped right up the handicap after three wins and a fine third behind Corach Rambler and Factorslow at Cheltenham in March; there looks to be much more to come, even if last season he did improve a bundle for run number one.
Contrastingly Beauport’s best effort of the last campaign was first-time-out, but although his stable is practically flying along he’s never won over this far. Eldorado Allen is also a Newbury entry – 20-1 with Fitzdares – and though he hasn’t won for a bit he’s a good old stick who almost always gives a run for money. Mucho Mas is on a roll, while Larry, a course and distance winner twice (including in this race), relishes the Ascot challenge, as does Two For Gold, another representing an in-form team. Ireland’s Yeah Man may be 0/6 in chases, but he’s from a stable that cleaned up at Cheltenham last weekend.
CORNELIUS’ QUARTET
It’s a smashing programme all day at Ascot, and I can’t wait for the horse called Bad to come good, and it could be now (3-15); Wetherby’s prestige programme hinges on the vagaries of the local river but, if it goes ahead, supporters of Ahoy Senor will be anticipating a less excitable display than twelve months ago when he used up too much juice too soon when eventually miles behind the returning emphatic winner (and old foe) Bravemansgame who, of course, went onto even greater things; at 2-25, the redoubtable and versatile Dashel Drasher is due to have his credentials over hurdles tested against another illustrious campaigner in Thyme Hill, who returns to the smaller obstacles having not looked a chasing natural.
I haven’t forgotten the 40th Breeders’ Cup, at which the Turf race (9-50) looks ripe for a 26th European-trained success as Auguste Rodin, King Of Steel, Mostahdaf and Onesto lock horns in a vintage encounter.
WINNER
At Ascot, any lover of the ‘horses for courses’ theory will look hard at Larry.
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