2008 AINTREE MEETING

Festival winners can create dilemma for Aintree players


by James Pyman

IF the Cheltenham Festival has whetted your appetite for high quality jumps racing, the good news is that Aintree is only two weeks away because the gap between Cheltenham and the Grand National meeting is just three weeks.

The Aintree fixture seems to get bigger and better every year, and one of the reasons behind its rise in popularity is that the types of races staged across the three days have been increasingly falling into line with those that we see at Cheltenham.

And that means there are more suitable targets for horses who have performed well at the festival, which has led to greater cohesion between the two meetings with more horses who raced at Prestbury Park heading to Aintree.

However, Aintree's sharp, flat track with its lush racing surface and epic home straight, presents more of a speed test than Cheltenham's undulations, although the difference can be overplayed as Cheltenham also suits horses who travel, while they are both left-handed.

The Grand National will always be Aintree's trump card, but what also makes the meeting so special is the series of rematches between those horses who a matter of weeks earlier were locked in battle up the lung-bursting hill at Cheltenham.

Cheltenham winners have proved that they are at the top of their respective divisions so, when putting their reputations on the line at Aintree, are usually at the top of the market, and the dilemma exchange punters face is whether a hard race at Cheltenham coupled with a change of track will be enough to stop them confirming theirsuperiority.

This is illustrated by the performances of Katchit and Inglis Drever at both meetings last season. Suffering a hangover from Cheltenham was less of a worry 12 months ago when the gap between Cheltenham and Aintree was four weeks, and Katchit, having proved he was the top juvenile hurdler by winning the Triumph by nine lengths, dispelled any doubts about his suitability to the course by justifying odds of evens with a four-length defeat of Punjabi in the John Smith's Anniversary 4-Y-O Novices' Hurdle.

Inglis Drever was sent off at 7-2 for the John Smith's Liverpool Hurdle on the back of his win in the World Hurdle, but the switch to a track that places greater emphasis on speed proved his undoing as he finished third behind Mighty Man and Black Jack Ketchum, both of whom he had beaten at Cheltenham.

Let's start by looking at how winners at the festival have fared at Aintree. The table shows that, since 1996, their overall record is 19 wins from 76 runs, so while you would have made a loss of £18.31 backing festival winners blind, their record suggests that sealing a prestigious across-the-meetings double is not an insurmountable task.

Even in those years when the fixtures were just a fortnight apart there were cases of horses winning at both meetings and 53 per cent of Cheltenham Festival winners finished in the first three at Aintree, while the gap this year is three weeks and following Cheltenham festival winners in those years when the gap was three weeks would have resulted in only a small loss of -£5.51 to a £1 stake.

From a trading perspective, more money is invariably traded on those horses at the top of the market and, interestingly, the so-called bankers of the meeting, festival winners who started at 5-2or shorter, have performed pretty well with ten winners from 24 runners.

It's the backers, not the layers, who would have come out on top most often, as backing them all to a £1 level stake would have returned a £17.40 profit.

Unfortunately it's too early to know which festival winners will be heading for Aintree, although three who could go that route and would probably start at 5-2 or shorter for their likely targets are Inglis Drever (Liverpool Hurdle), Albertas Run (Mildmay Novices' Chase) and Tidal Bay (Maghull Novices' Chase).

Inglis Drever's reverse last year is a big worry for his fans, particularly if Kasbah Bliss, who Inglis Drever wore down in the closing stages at Cheltenham, turns up as he may be able to outspeed Inglis Drever at Aintree. That leaves Albertas Run and Tidal Bay as more reliable bankers.

The four-year-old hurdle has been a happy hunting ground for Triumph Hurdle winners since it was upgraded to Grade 1 status – so the Triumph scorers no longer have to carry a penalty – as the double has been achieved in the last two seasons, but this year's Triumph hero Celestial Halo looks set to miss Aintree.

However, festival winners haven't performed as well in handicaps. Since 1996, the recordof festival handicap winners at Aintree is just three winners from 24 runners, so I'll be a layer of any winners from festival handicaps who start at skinny prices. - RACINGPOST.COM