Racing Commentary: Coral reveals glint of Gold

BAD year for steeplechasers? Tosh, says David Nicholson, and anybody who is inclined to argue with a trainer who has a strike-rate higher than even Martin Pipe's ought to take a long walk in the country.

Nicholson has decided to train Another Coral for the Gold Cup. If many more of his charges become eligible for this year's Cheltenham Festival then Nicholson may need to have a few Graham Taylor-esque conversations with disappointed owners: 'Sorry, Colonel, your lad's not made the team. Maybe next year, eh?'

Another Coral will make the team, and so will Scrutineer, Nicholson's other winner at Newbury on Saturday. Another Coral? Surely his powers of endurance stretch only to two-and-a-half-mile races like the one he won over the weekend. Not so, says Nicholson, and his confidence in the horse's ability to perform creditably over three and a quarter miles - and in a much higher grade - is definitely not based on a belief that there is a paucity of high-class staying chasers around this year.

'People are always too quick to say that,' Nicholson said from the gothically titled Jackdaw's Castle stables yesterday. 'They say there are no decent three-year-olds, no novice chasers, no Gold Cup horses. But there's nothing wrong with The Fellow, or Run For Free, or even Pat's Jester judging by the way he ran at Kempton (in the King George VI Chase).'

Nor is there much amiss with Another Coral, who has secured five of his nine victories at Cheltenham and so will have the often vital asset of local knowledge when he meets The Fellow and company in the race that Nicholson won, in 1988, with Charter Party. Moreover Nicholson believes that an offer of 33-1 from the bookmakers Coral yesterday is nothing like an approximation of Another Coral's chance, saying: 'I shouldn't think that price will be available for very long.'

Nicholson explains the new and bookie-surprising policy with Another Coral thus: 'I decided he could be a Gold Cup horse after he won the Tripleprint Gold Cup, or whatever you call it, three weeks ago. He seems to be a totally different horse now. He's not sweating, he's not worrying, he travels well through a race and there is no reason why he shouldn't get the trip. He's 10, and so now's the time to find out.'

Indeed. March will be the time to find out, too, about Jodami, who captured the Mandarin Chase at Newbury and who could easily have been on Nicholson's cynic- baiting list of worthy Gold Cup candidates. Jodami is not short of admirers, rest assured, and when his trainer, Peter Beaumont, personally drove him the 250 miles from Newbury back to his yard at Brandsby, North Yorkshire, on Saturday night, it was with another tempting offer ringing in his fog- bound (on the A1) ears.

'Somebody tried to buy him again,' Beaumont said yesterday, making it sound as frequent an occurrence as tea being made in an episode of Eastenders. But still Jodami's owner prefers to hold on to the dream, and so still there exists the possibility that three seasons after Norton's Coin won the Gold Cup for Sirrell Griffiths and his dairy herd, chasing's grandest race will fall to Beaumont, trainer and horse-box driver, and his 17- horse squad based at the prosaically named Foulrice Farm.

That Jodami needs to progress further along the improvement channel is beyond dispute, because in beating the resurgent Esha Ness on Saturday he was racing off a handicap mark 23lb below that which The Fellow has acquired for his triumphs. But the form of rising young steeplechasers (remember Burrough Hill Lad?) is dynamic, not static, and you have no choice but to listen respectfully when Beaumont says, as he did yesterday: 'He will certainly come on some more from what he did at Newbury. I can see he has ground to make up on The Fellow at the weights, but so has everything else.'

Beaumont says his preference in terms of prep-races is for the Hennessy Gold Cup at Leopardstown in February, where Run For Free and Chatam may also appear next, though events at Cheltenham and Haydock have also been circled as possible tuning exercises for Jodami. Wherever he runs, his prominent position in the Gold Cup betting - as low as 6-1 second- favourite with Coral - demonstrates how inherently strong northern jump racing is when it is given the material to work with. As further evidence, Gordon Richards and Mary Reveley shared six of the seven races at Ayr on Saturday.

In the footnotes from the weekend belongs news that Sheikh Mohammed's Scrutineer is 16-1 (leave well alone) for the Triumph Hurdle following his debut win in the last at Newbury, while yet another Nicholson luminary, Baydon Star, has been ruled out of the Ladbroke Hurdle at Leopardstown and will be trained for Cheltenham's Bishops Cleeve Hurdle on 30 January.

Richard Dunwoody, who is riding the surf of Nicholson-trained winners, is 7-2 on with William Hill to depose Peter Scudamore (now 5-2) as champion jockey, and must have nearly finished his wallchart of Cheltenham Festival mounts now that Another Coral has filled the largest space of all.

Today's turf meetings at Newbury and Wolverhampton are severely threatened by frost. Both tracks will be inspected at 7.30am.

(Photograph omitted)