King George thoughts

    After a terrific afternoon's racing the market for Boxing Day's great race has had a major shake-up with Vautour hardening as favourite and Cue Card steaming into single figures after his scintillating win at Haydock. I wasn't that impressed with the former though - admittedly he would have needed the run but he jumped out to his left on a number of occasions and with stamina over three miles unproven he must be taken on at his price. I won't be doing that with Cue Card who has failed a number of times at Kempton and I think the layers have over-reacted to Silviniaco Conti's rather tired ending to the Betfair. He looked in terrific condition and jumped best throughout but to my eyes he went just a bit too hard given how soft the ground was. These were tactics that worked to perfection in last year's King George and one can see the logic behind them, last year it made Champagne Fever run with the choke out throughout the race. However Cue Card is a far more experienced chaser and he just kept finding and finding despite the odd clumsy leap. Ultimately one layer went 14/1 about the Nicholls horse immediately after the race and I had to take some of that. The theme of this jumps season so far is the premature writing off of top class chasers and it would be very hasty to do the same with this one, particularly given who handles him.

King George:

Silviniaco Conti £10w @ 14/1