Shuffling JP McManus’s Cheltenham cards could involve more than one deck although one that’s likely to be played as late as possible is which race Fact To File goes for.
If two recent defeats to Galopin Des Champs have resulted in widespread presumption he will drop in trip for the Ryanair Chase, the McManus team still isn’t ruling out going for broke in the Gold Cup.
“He has the choice, and I’d say we’ll be delaying it as long as possible to see how the Gold Cup line-up is going and how the Gold Cup horses are standing up,” said McManus’s spokesman Frank Berry on Monday.
The subtext looks a lot like waiting to see if Galopin Des Champs comes through the next fortnight unscathed but Fact To File still presents his ownership with a tricky stick-or-twist scenario.
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Having jumped to blue riband favouritism when having Galopin behind him in November’s John Durkan, Fact To File’s stamina for three miles – never mind the extended Gold Cup trip – is in question after defeats in the Savills at Christmas and the Irish Gold Cup earlier this month.
In the latter contest, he was run out of second in the closing stages by the 66–1 shot Grangeclare West, a performance that left many assuming the Ryanair would be a more suitable Cheltenham fit.
“I was a little disappointed to be honest that he wasn’t second. He settled lovely, got a great run-through, and you couldn’t make any big excuses. Maybe the horse that beat him for second is a good horse. You’d have to have a question mark about it [stamina] but I wouldn’t rule it out,” said Berry.
Fact To File is still a 6–1 second favourite in Gold Cup betting but is a general 6–4 market leader for the Ryanair.
One McManus runner with the Gold Cup definitely in his sights is Corbetts Cross who should relish the increase in distance having failed to land a blow on Pic D’orhy in the recent Ascot Chase.
“He came out of the race very well. If Emmet (Mullins) is happy with him, and the ground looks like being on the slow side, he could tog out in the Gold Cup. It was an eye-opener for him the last day, the good ground and the speed they went around. I’d say he didn’t run a bad race,” said Berry.
Another McManus star, Spillane’s Tower, runner-up to Fact To File in the Durkan, is also in the Ryanair mix as the owner’s large Cheltenham team gets slotted into almost all of the festival’s 28 races.
Cheltenham’s most successful owner brought his overall festival tally to 78 last year with five more winners. His best-ever haul was seven in 2020. McManus’s first winner was Mister Donovan in 1982 but rarely has he gone into the biggest week of the year with such firepower.
The ante-post betting for almost half the festival contests features a McManus runner as either favourite or second favourite. Most notable of all is Jonbon, now odds-on to finally break his owner’s duck in the Queen Mother Champion Chase.
One horse that won’t be making the trip to Pestbury Park is the highly rated novice Kawaboomga. He had been in the mix for the Supreme of the Turners Novice Hurdle but has met a training setback.
Although she isn’t qualified to run in one of the handicaps at Cheltenham, Joyeuse hasn’t been ruled out of making a festival appearance by her connections.
The McManus mare won a big handicap at Newbury earlier this month on only her fourth start over hurdles. That is less than the required number of starts to line up for a handicap at Cheltenham.
She could however still be supplemented for the Close Bros Mares Hurdle after this weekend’s Morebattle Hurdle at Kelso was ruled out as an option.
“She’s fine but she’s not going to Kelso. Everything is under consideration for her I would say, we can put it like that, we haven’t got any further. We did think about Kelso, but it was only three weeks ago and she would have had an awful lot of weight, so we’ve decided to leave that,” said trainer Nicky Henderson.
