Racing Demon

Arkle Trophy, Cheltenham

All Time Great Lays

If you were asked what went off favourite for the 2006 Arkle, the race in which Voy Por Ustedes got the better of a titanic duel with Monet's Garden to get home by a length, it might surprise you to know that it was Racing Demon. It doesn't make sense now, and it didn't make sense then.

The thing about Racing Demon is that he has always needed to go right-handed, a trait that became even more pronounced when he stopped jumping hurdles and started jumping fences. True, he had finished second in the Sun Alliance Hurdle in 2005 at left-handed Cheltenham, going under by just three parts of a length to the fast-finishing No Refuge, but he finished out in the middle of the track that day, and that turned out to be a particularly weak renewal of the Sun Alliance.

The Old Vic gelding had run three times over fences before the Arkle and, although he won all three, two of them were relatively uncompetitive events in the context of the Arkle and all three were at right-handed tracks. More than that, even on those right-handed tracks it was unusually apparent that he needed to go right, particularly on his final run before Cheltenham at Exeter when he did his best to take a couple of the right-hand wings with him.

The other thing about Racing Demon was that, even at that stage of his career, it looked like he needed a greater test of stamina than two miles on goodish ground to be seen at his best. It was significant that trainer Henrietta Knight had chosen to run him in the Sun Alliance Hurdle over two miles and five furlongs the previous season rather than in the Supreme Novices’ over two miles, this from a trainer who had chosen the shorter contest for subsequent triple Gold Cup hero Best Mate in his novice hurdling days.

Racing Demon’s best effort before the 2005 Cheltenham Festival over hurdles had been in a two-mile-three-furlong contest on soft ground at Exeter, one of the stiffer tracks in the country. Also, two of his three wins over fences had been at distances in excess of two miles and, while he did win a chase over the minimum trip, that was on really soft ground at Sandown when they went a suicide early gallop, thus making it a greater test of stamina than it might have been.

Racing Demon set off just behind the leaders in the Arkle under Sam Thomas ? the first and only time he teamed up with this year’s Gold Cup-winning jockey ? towards the outside, but from as early as the third fence, when he jumped markedly to his right, he faced an uphill struggle. The pace in the race was unrelenting, and Racing Demon was never able to find a rhythm, jumping, as he did, regularly to his right. By the time they set off down the hill on the far side, the favourite was just a bit-part player, and Thomas could only look on from afar as Monet’s Garden and Voy Por Ustedes duelled around the home turn, coming home in his own time a disappointing and distant seventh.

It was interesting that immediately after the race, his trainer said that he would be aimed at the Gold Cup races the following season, that two miles was on the sharp side for him. A year later, she admitted that he probably needed to go right-handed as well.