Cheltenham, Day Three

There are four meetings taking place this afternoon with jumps cards from Cheltenham, Hexham and Doncaster, whilst there is an all-weather flat card from Chelmsford City.  Of course, the focus is going to be on the third day of the Cheltenham Festival where the big race of the day is the Stayers' Hurdle.  David has three runners today; Brinkley, Main Fact and Eamon An Cnoic.  Brinkley (pictured above) contests the Pertemps Final at 1.55pm.  It is a 3m handicap hurdle that David has won a couple of times before with the mighty Buena Vista.  After a blip on his seasonal reappearance, he has looked very good in winning his last two starts in very good style and is progressing fast.  The biggest concern is the ground as he has done all of his winning on soft or heavy going and it certainly isn't going to be that.  Hopefully, he will handle it okay under Tom Scudamore.

Main Fact contests the feature race, the Stayers' Hurdle at 3.05pm.  Who would have thought that was even possibly just over a year ago when he was running from a mark of just 98?  He has been one of the stories of the season and whilst today's race requires another personal best, I am sure connections are thrilled to even have a horse good enough to go to Cheltenham.  The biggest concern is the ground as all of his successes have been exclusively on soft or heavy ground.  It is a tough ask but he will be doing his best and what an opportunity for young Fergus Gillard, to ride in a feature race at his first Cheltenham Festival.

Our final runner is Eamon An Cnoic who contests the 2m4f Paddy Power Plate handicap chase at 3.40pm.  It is a race that he has run well in in the past, finishing fourth from a 7lbs higher mark two years ago.  He has been in good form of late, winning at Sandown over hurdles and he won't mind the ground.  He sneaks in right a the bottom of the weights and it would be no surprise to see him go well and he is a lively outsider under David Noonan.

There were some amazing performances on day two of the Festival.  Bob Olinger produced a deeply impressive performance in the Ballymore - a race that has proven to be a good pointer for the Champion Hurdle in the past with the likes of Istabraq, Hardy Eustace and Faugheen all landing this race en-route to glory in the two miler.  He looked to have a lot more speed than Bravemansgame who is much more a staying chaser in the making.  Of course, connections of Bob Olinger already have Honeysuckle so it will be interesting to see what route they take with him.

Monkfish did everything wrong in the Brown Advisory but was still too good for his rivals as he continues his march towards the top, whilst Put The Kettle On really is as tough as old boots and did tremendously well to become the first mare to win the Champion Chase.  The biggest roar (if there had been one) would probably have been reserved for Tiger Roll, he stormed right back to his best to land the cross country chase for a third time.  What a pity he will not be allowed to run at Aintree.

*****

Patient:  Doctor, Doctor, I think I'm a bridge!
Doctor:  What's come over you?
Patient:  73 cars, 14 trucks and a coach!