Celestial Halo falls on chasing debut at Exeter
The markets said that he was a certainty and the official handicapper reckoned that he was at least 35lbs superior to any other horse in the race.
Celestial Halo came to Exeter to make his chasing debut backed up by an impressive record over hurdles as the Triumph Hurdle winner of 2008 and the runner-up in the Champion Hurdle 12 months later. But the flipside has been the crashing fall, in the Grade One Aintree Hurdle six months ago, that left jockey Ruby Walsh with a triple fracture of his left arm.
Thankfully the only damage done this time was to pride and, perhaps, plans. For most of the Best Mate Beginners’ Chase the race seemed to be following the script. Celestial Halo began jumping well enough and seemed to be warming to his task down the back straight, by which time only Rougham, trained by Philip Hobbs, was able to keep in contention.
He was close enough but did not look good enough to make a race of it by the fourth-last but Celestial Halo brought about his own downfall when he stepped at the fence and landed far too steeply. However, Rougham was not about to profit as he also fell and Richard Johnson was lucky to avoid Walsh as both jockey hit the deck within a foot of each other, leaving Diamond Brook - trained by Nick Williams and ridden by Daryl Jacob – to get the better of Jocheski by a head.
Diamond Brook had to survive a lengthy post-race inquiry and while the stewards were making their deliberations Walsh and Paul Nicholls, Celestial Halo’s trainer, were having their own debrief.
“He’s OK – that’s the main thing,” Nicholls said. “He’s done a lot of schooling at homes – he’s always schooled over fences since we’ve had him.
“He jumped great up until then, stepped at that fence and paid the penalty. He’d been careful but one of his traits when he’s been hurdling is that he’s always revved up and stepping at his hurdles. That’s what he did at Aintree and he’s almost done that at the fence – and he didn’t get away with it,” Nicholls said, adding “it wasn’t ideal – so back to the drawing board.
“Plenty of horses have fallen on their debut and come back and been fine. We’ll just have to go back and see where we are. But we’ve still got the option of going back over hurdles. I’ve always had it at the back of my mind that he’s by Galileo – he’s hardly chasing bred – and one of the features of his hurdle racing is going flat out and jumping brilliantly over hurdles. It just might be that he doesn’t take fences.”
Quinz took to fences well enough in the three-mile novice chase as part of a double for Hobbs and Johnson. Quinz is big enough for the job but there was still an element of guessing at some of his fences as Johnson asked him to stand off the fence and the horse decided that he wasn’t that brave.
“He’s just got a bit to learn about jumping,” Hobbs admitted. “At home he’s foot-perfect but here, just going a little bit quicker, he wasn’t quite so clever on occasions.
“The main thing is that he’s a very big horse and Richard said that it’s a very long way from his brains to his feet and things don’t quite coordinate some times. But hopefully he’ll get it organised in future. I think three miles, or maybe, three miles-plus is what he’s going to want. He won very well at Kempton, in a handicap hurdle last year, and I suppose with his handicap mark being 130 you’d have thought after this we’re more likely to be in a handicap.”
Dare Me is the trainer’s horse to follow and he made a winning start over hurdles when he beat Kasbadali by 12 lengths. Johnson summed up the dilemma that trainers and jockeys face with young horses whose reputation often exceeds what they have achieved thus far. “He’s got himself quite excited beforehand and it was just nice to get his first run under his belt,” the jockey said. “We’d have been quite disappointed if he hadn’t won but they still have to come here and show that they can do it.”
That is something that Celestial Halo still has to prove.
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