“My heart rate didn’t go above 80,” Tony Bloom, the owner of both Brighton & Hove Albion and Energumene, said after his horse’s second win in the Queen Mother Champion Chase and, while the poker-playing Bloom is used to betting under pressure, the same was probably true for most of the victor’s backers. From the moment he took over after jumping the third-last, there was only one possible winner and Energumene will have a leading chance to complete a hat-trick if he returns to the Festival next year.
By then, Bloom’s football team could be playing in Europe, as his transformative chairmanship over the last 14 years has put Brighton on course for their best-ever finish in the top flight. They also face Grimsby on Sunday in the quarter-finals of the FA Cup, while Bloom hot-footed it away from Cheltenham after Wednesday’s race for a 7.30pm home kick-off against the team’s fiercest rivals, Crystal Palace.
On two legs and four, everything seems to be going Bloom’s way, and there was even a sprinkling of rain in the hours before the race to add to the confidence behind Energumene. It was nothing like the deluge that preceded his success 12 months ago, but still enough to see him shorten from 13-8 second-favourite to 6-5 market leader at the off.
The fact that Bloom himself had “a few quid” on Energumene may have also been a factor and his lacklustre performance when favourite for the Clarence House Chase here in January was soon forgotten.
“He didn’t run to his best in the Clarence House but he has really shown his class today,” Bloom said. “We were confident going in [and] he looked the winner the whole way through. I didn’t have any pressure, it was all on Energumene and he takes all the pressure unbelievably well.
“It would be nice [to win the FA Cup too] but we will focus on Crystal Palace tonight and I will be there later on, and after that we will concentrate on the Grimsby Town game.”
Paul Townend, the winner’s jockey, could scarcely believe how smoothly his horse carried him through the race. “That was easy, to be honest,” he said. “I got in a lovely rhythm on him. After the first two fences he was taking them on, it was just a matter of keeping him in a rhythm after that. It was a dream ride and I was able to take it all in coming up the straight, which doesn’t usually happen in championship races.”
Townend was also aboard El Fabiolo, the impressive winner in Tuesday’s Arkle Trophy, and Energumene’s stable companion at the Willie Mullins yard is a narrow favourite in the early betting for next year’s Champion Chase. That may reflect the fact that Energumene will be a 10-year-old in March 2024 but his fans will take comfort from the fact that Badsworth Boy, the only horse ever to win the Champion Chase three times, was also 10 for his final success.
Energumene was the highlight of another five-winner day for Irish stables, which opened with the easy victory of Mullins’s Impaire Et Passe in the Ballymore Novice Hurdle. Delta Work repeated his 2022 success in the Cross Country Chase, while Maskada and A Dream To Share landed the Grand Annual and the Champion Bumper, respectively.
The tide of Irish winners was interrupted in the second race, however, as The Real Whacker took the Grade One Brown Advisory Novice Chase under a brilliant frontrunning ride by Sam Twiston-Davies.
The Real Whacker held the late charge of Gerri Colombe, the 5-4 favourite, by a short head to give Patrick Neville, his trainer, his first winner at the Festival.
“He’s won three times here now,” Neville said. “I don’t think I’ll run him anywhere else. This is my first season with a licence in Britain [and] it’s working out great. We’ll mind him for next year and come back for the Gold Cup, hopefully.
“We were thinking about it this year, but we’ve probably made the right decision for the horse – he’d only run six times before today, so we’ve given him that bit of experience and we’ll come back next year.”
Townend’s double on the day puts him on three for the week, one in front of the rising star Michael O’Sullivan, who rode a double on day one. Mullins, meanwhile, is on four wins at the meeting, with six more required to equal last year’s record total of 10.
