Ascot has largely managed to buck the trend of falling attendances at Britain’s biggest tracks and its popularity clearly extends to some of its four-legged regulars too. Crambo, last year’s winner of the Grade One Long Walk Hurdle, failed to run to anything like the same level in two subsequent starts at Cheltenham and Aintree in the spring, but on his return here on Saturday Fergal O’Brien’s gelding rediscovered his winning form as he grimly held off the late challenge of Hiddenvalley Lake.
Crambo and Johnny Burke had a head to spare at the line – a slight improvement on last year’s short-head success – and O’Brien, whose horses have been struggling to find their best form in recent weeks, was briefly in tears in the winner’s enclosure as Crambo’s success was confirmed.
“The horses haven’t been quite right but the winning of this race was not running at Newbury,” O’Brien said of last month’s Long Distance Hurdle. “I knew we could get him better and I knew he likes the track here. If we were going to see the old Crambo, the best place to come was here. I couldn’t do it without the owners, so I’m so grateful to Chris [Giles] for letting me wait and come back here. He’s shown us what we wanted to see today.”
O’Brien, who trains a few miles from Cheltenham, has been a regular in the top 10 in the British trainers’ table for several seasons but has yet to saddle a winner at the track’s festival meeting in March. Crambo was cut to around 16-1 for the Stayers’ Hurdle after his return to form, but the Long Walk is Ascot’s only Grade One event over timber so the question now is whether he should be asked – or expected – to reproduce the form at the big spring festivals.
“Johnny will be a big part of where we go next,” O’Brien said. “He’s the one who’s riding him and he’s the one who knows how he felt at Cheltenham last year.
“I genuinely think we had a good first half of the season and then the wheels fell off. I was a bit disappointed in myself for running him at Aintree [in April] but he’s come back here and he’s shown what he can do.”
Hiddenvalley Lake’s narrow defeat ensured that the Long Walk remains the only non-novice Grade One in the British calendar that has never been won by a horse trained in Ireland, but Henry de Bromhead and Darragh O’Keeffe, his trainer and jockey, did at least leave Ascot with a decent prize after Jungle Boogie’s frontrunning success in the card’s graduation chase.
The standard runner in a race of this type is a young chaser on the rise, and not a 10-year-old who ran in last season’s Cheltenham Gold Cup. Jungle Boogie’s career, though, has been blighted by regular absences due to injury, and this was only his fifth start over fences and seventh career outing in all.
Lingfield: 11.30 Forge Valley Lad 12.00 Zip It Up 12.30 Five Winds 1.00 Daaris 1.30 Time Patrol 2.00 Ravensbourne 2.30 Mc Loven (nap) 3.00 State Flag 3.30 Book Of Life.
Fakenham: 12.13 Faded Fantasy 12.43 Simply Gorgeous 1.13 Kosasiempre 1.43 Go West 2.13 Jony Max 2.43 Zhang Fei 3.13 Lunar Contact (nb).
He travelled well for a long way in the Gold Cup in March before a mistake three out left him struggling, and assuming that his trainer can keep him sound, the 25-1 on general offer for the Ryanair Chase at Cheltenham in March could be significantly shorter on the day.
Later on the card, Victtorino supplied Venetia Williams and Charlie Deutsch with what is beginning to feel like their weekly success in a valuable steeplechase, as the favourite came with a perfectly timed run to win the Howden Silver Cup for the second year running.
The winning team’s attention will now turn to the King George VI Chase at Kempton on Thursday, in which the stable will now run just L’Homme Presse, the beaten favourite two seasons ago, as Royale Pagaille, the winner of the Grade One Betfair Chase in November, has suffered a minor setback.
“L’Homme Presse runs, I don’t think we’re going to take Royale Pagaille,” Williams said. “He’ll go straight to the Peter Marsh [at Haydock in January] and that’ll be far more up his street.”
