Alnadam’s delayed Cheltenham raid might prove to be beautifully timed

Paddy Power New Year’s Day Handicap Chase (2.00 Cheltenham)

Grade 3 | 2m4½f | 5yo+ | ITV/RTV

Popular wisdom has it that the diet of Cheltenham handicap chases around this 2m4½f trip get weaker as the season goes on. Previous digs into the data have suggested that is only partially true. The quality, measured by the average of how far ahead of its mark a horse must be to make the first four, has tended to crater in this race before getting stronger up to and including the Paddy Power Plate in March.

That has a few knock-on effects for this particular race. It means that it may be a blessing that Alnadam missed the Racing Post Gold Cup last month, as he gets to run in an easier contest. It means Coole Cody and Zanza may be able to absorb their rises for finishing first and second three weeks ago if the softer conditions do not affect them too much – although there is reason to believe that it might.

It also means this is an easier race than the Paddy Power Gold Cup, in which Simply The Betts shaped much better than his finishing position of sixth, shared with Zanza. He is fit and 1lb lower in the weights now, while his run in the Many Clouds can be excused. He was held up over a longer distance and that had knock-on effects for his jumping, which was not as polished as usual.

Simply The Betts won at the Cheltenham Festival on soft a couple of years ago and will likely be ridden by Harry Cobden with the sort of intent that Bryony Frost displayed in the Paddy Power Gold Cup. Soft conditions tend to make it even harder than usual for horses to make up ground from off the pace, so expect those ridden prominently – Coole Cody, Alnadam and Simply The Betts, but also the likes of Funambule Sivola and High Up In The Air – to be strongly represented in the finish.

Analysis by Keith Melrose