Cheltenham 2024 Antepost 2

The season has kicked into life in a major way and it feels like a lot of the festival races are still wide open, has Mullins just not unleashed his best novices yet? By his own dominant standards, he’s certainly having a slow start to the year, with short priced ante post horses Ballyburn and Tullyhill both beaten on their respective debuts, Tullyhill being particularly disappointing. He certainly hasn’t sent out any of his top juvenile horses, though I imagine by the end of February we’ll see him have at least two of the top 3 in the betting. Wink-wink Majborough. I’ve been discussing with friends how it appears that the prices we are getting ante post this year are actually quite fair, outside of 1 or 2 heavy favourites. For example, Albert Bartlett winner Stay Away Fay has now won really well twice over fences and is available at 5/1 and I believe you could get between 8-10/1 after his first win. Gaelic Warrior was the favourite over the summer and he now seems to be possibly staying at shorter trips, and yet the bookies don’t seem to have overreacted with the price of Stay Away Fay, as they would have done in recent years. Even behind those two in the Market, you have a dual Stayer’s Hurdle winner in Flooring Porter, sitting at 16/1 in off the back of a good win over course and distance, beating a subsequent 20 length listed winner; and then being beaten in a Grade Two going the wrong way round, being hampered by a loose horse and still running well for a long way. With Down Memory Lane winning nicely since I put him up, and holding the right sort of entries over the Christmas period, I'm still happy with that selection, but even his price hasn’t contracted that much for a facile win.

My second bet for the festival comes in the National Hunt Chase, Minella Cocooner at 14/1. An extremely good novice hurdler two season ago, he won the grade one Nathaniel Lacy over 2 miles and 6 furlongs at the Dublin Racing Festival in the style of a top horse. Then, after going off just 9/2 for the Albert Bartlett, he would then finish a good second to his enigmatic but extremely talented stablemate, The Nice Guy. He was unlucky not to reverse that form and got closer to that horse at the Punchestown Festival when beaten less than a length.

A 1st season in novice chase company saw him run just once, finishing just about two lengths second to recent open company listed scorer, Classic Getaway over 2 miles 4 on heavy ground. Minella Cocooner made the running and the sapping ground was telling and he wasonly beaten on the run in by Classic Getaway. The two had pulled a long way clear of Whatdeawant in 3rd, another Mullins horse who himself was a very good novice hurdler. The 30 lengths 4th in that chase was subsequent Kim Muir winner, Angels Dawn; the 6th a grade two winning 152 rated hurdler. And the talented Journey With Me was well beaten behind the front two when falling. To try and put into perspective just how bad the ground conditions that day were- We didn't see Minella Cocooner again at all last season and the winner and third also didn't reappear until right at the end of the year some 5 months later and were both well below their best. That extended break leaves him as a second season novice and one who I think could take advantage of that status, as did his stablemate Gaillard Du Mesnil did last season.

I was slightly worried that he wasn't mentioned in the preseason stable tours but he has held a few entires in the past couple of weeks and is entered in the graded races between Christmas and New Year, so I now have some confidence that he is back and well. He stays well, has a real class angle, and I believe they had at least considered this race as a target for him based on interview with Patrick recently. The only concern would be if he was to run in the Brown Advisory, though I would hope Mullins has some other novices to send there. At 14/1 I think the price is more than fair and I’mwilling to take the chance that this is the route they go down as a 1pt win bet.