RACING: Truckers Tavern is one of the brightest young chasing prospects in Britain and can get his campaign off to a flying start with victory at Ascot today.
Ferdy Murphy sends his strapping chaser south from Middleham for the £50,000 First National Gold Cup where the only real negative against his charge is the two mile, three furlong trip.
He is going to come into his own later this term over three miles plus but showed enough when fourth in last year's Arkle Trophy at Cheltenham that he can be effective over this distance.
Truckers Tavern was staying on to some effect that day after being taken off his feet a touch when things got serious up front but stuck to his task well and lost little, if anything, in defeat.
He had previously finished a cracking second to Harbour Pilot in a Grade One at Leopardstown after trying to make all. His last effort a was below-par one at Fairyhouse but that can be forgiven as he was clearly feeling the effects of a tiring campaign.
A deluge of rain overnight would not go amiss as his best work is done on testing ground but he is a classy individual and he can overcome the negatives. Fondmort, who would be more at home at this sort of trip, rates the main danger.
Historg will be keeping his more illustrious stablemate company on the long journey from North Yorkshire but he is worth an interest in his own right in the Coral.co.uk Handicap Chase. Murphy's inmates have been coming on for a run this season and the seven-year-old made a pleasing reappearance in the circumstances when third at Kelso, beaten around seven lengths by the smart Direct Access.
Truckers Tavern may well contest the Cheltenham Gold Cup next March but it is the current holder of chasing's blue riband, Best Mate, who will be the centre of attention at Huntingdon.
Henrietta Knight's superstar makes his seasonal bow in the £55,000 McCallum Corporate Consulting Peterborough Chase. Miss Knight has farmed this race in recent times with Edredon Bleu and his stablemate will be a very warm order to keep her run going.
But the one fly in the ointment could be the Guillaume Macaire-trained talking horse Douze Douze.
The French handler launched numerous successful raids on these shores last term and he rates this six-year-old as possibly the best chaser he has handled. If that is the case then he will be hard for Best Mate to overcome giving him 10lb.
Baracouda, owned by J P McManus, maintained his unbeaten record in Britain with a last-gasp success in the PricewaterhouseCoopers Ascot Hurdle yesterday. Francois Doumen's champion staying hurdler repeated his success in the same race 12 months ago as he ploughed through the mud to beat Mr Cool. But Thierry Doumen, the rider of the 2 to 5 favourite, had to pull out all the stops in desperate conditions to get his mount's neck in front on the line.
It was hardly the ideal introduction for the season for Baracouda, who will now return to Ascot for the Long Walk Hurdle on December 20th. But for punters who piled in on the odds-on favourite, things were not looking good when champion jockey Tony McCoy poached an enormous lead on Mr Cool as the tape went up.
As Baracouda, Landing Light and Carlovent jumped the second hurdle, Mr Cool was already tackling the third and after about half a mile of the two-and-a-half-mile race, he was about 50 lengths clear. But inch by painstaking inch, Baracouda - like Mr Cool flat to the boards - got to the leader and edged ahead on the line to win by a neck. The pair were 30 lengths clear of third-placed Carlovent.
