Fascinating Clash on Cards

27 November 2009

While the WBX.COM Fighting Fifth Hurdle at Newcastle on Saturday promises another epic contest, with two of the real Champion Hurdle heavyweights flexing their muscles, sadly I’ll be 300 miles and a bit more away to the South-West at Newbury.

Not that witnessing the Hennessy is ever a dull experience, but to have to sit out the chance of a £1 million bonus that my boss Raymond Tooth so nearly collected last season is a slight irritation.

However, the stubbornly hard to get fit Punjabi was still a little way short of peak fitness when Nicky Henderson decided on a change of plan last week, sending Binocular, last March’s beaten but hardly bowed Champion Hurdle favourite, in Punjabi’s stead.

It meant that our fellow would not have the opportunity to show it was he that should have won in Ireland on May 1 rather than his short-head conqueror Solwhit. A last-flight mistake halted the normally fluent jumping Punjabi, but Barry Geraghty was coming back at Solwhit all the way to the line and we thought we might have won in another 10 yards.

In consolation, you could hardly have wished for a better endorsement of the form’s merit than Solwhit’s emphatic comeback defeat of front-running Muirhead and Hurricane Fly over the same Punchestown two miles and on similarly testing going.

With the form and fitness in the book, Solwhit will be going to Gosforth Park with an edge on Binocular, but after Zaynar’s romp at Ascot – and he has always been regarded as a relative slow-coach at home compared with Binocular – the Henderson hurdling team could hardly look more powerful.

Tony McCoy will be a big attraction at Newcastle, and the prospect of a tactical match with Solwhit adds to the appeal. Of course with former Champion Hurdle winner Sublimity, so close to Punjabi in last year’s Fighting Fifth epic at its temporary home of Wetherby after Newcastle’s abandonment through frost a week earlier, cannot be ignored.

Robbie Hennessy has been fulsome in his praise of his stable star’s current well-being, and the Irish horse could be a little over-priced in a book that is polarised around the big two.

As with the Solwhit race recently and also the reaction to Zaynar’s comeback win, the bookies will be hyper-sensitive to events at Gosforth, and there is little doubt that the winner (apart from an unsatisfactory muddling pace) will be favourite for Cheltenham.

The best part about that, is that he will also no doubt turn up at Kempton, as the only possible winner of WBX’s lavish seven-figure bonus. Good luck to them all, and that includes Al Eile who has had the target for ages and as a specialist at the Aintree two and a half miles, should be a factor.

That said, whoever wins here and at Kempton will have to get past the reigning Champion. Punjabi will be having a weekend excursion to Newbury for a not-exacting away-day in preparation for Cheltenham two weeks later. We’re keeping our fingers crossed and will have more than half an eye on Binocular, Solwhit and the rest.

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