Hughes your best Grand National bet then Dessie?
The luck of the Irish is a commodity that Dessie Hughes might not claim to have had much contact with when it comes to the John Smith’s Grand National.
Irish-born jockeys have won 12 of the last 15 renewals of the race and half of those victories came aboard Irish-trained horses. However, as both jockey and trainer Hughes has yet to complete the course.
For most jockeys riding in the National is the most thrilling prospect of the season but, in four attempts, he never landed safely over Becher’s Brook first time. His best chance came in 1977 when he rode the lightly-weighted Davy Lad who had got into the race on just 10st 13lb and then showed his potential by winning the Cheltenham Gold Cup by six lengths just 16 days before Aintree.
“Davy Lad didn’t take to it at all,” Hughes recently recalled. “He wasn’t big but he was big enough and he’d never fallen, but I knew after he’d jumped the first two very slowly that it wasn’t for him and he refused at the third. He was the only decent horse I rode in the race.”
Hughes’s record in the race as a trainer thus far is no better as Black Apalachi has failed to complete in the last two years, but that tells only half the story of that horse and half of the team that the trainer takes to Aintree this year.
Black Apalachi may have fallen at the second in 2008 and unseated rider his rider at Becher’s second time around 12 months ago but in between he won the Becher Chase over the National fences and stable companion Vic Venturi won the same race this season.
Black Apalachi has a decent record of seven wins from 36 starts and first showed signs of being a National prospect when he won the Paddy Power Chase over three miles at Leopardstown’s Christmas meeting in 2005, when trained by Philip Rothwell.
He failed to win in three further starts in competitive handicaps, the 2006/07 season turned out to be disappointing as he failed to finish better than fifth in five starts. Black Apalachi reappeared for the 2007/08 season in the care of Hughes, but it was a slow haul back to his best form.
He only made it to the second fence in his first attempt at the Grand National and his form was punctuated by inconsistency. However, it all came right with another crack at the Grand National fences in the 2008 Becher Handicap Chase, when he jumped superbly and revelled in the heavy ground, beating the previous year’s winner Mr Pointment by 74 lengths.
In last year’s National he was still leading the field when unseating Denis O’Regan at Becher’s Brook on the second circuit and he has been given a quiet preparation ahead of this year’s race. After finishing unplaced in a handicap hurdle at Leopardstown in January, he chased home his stable companion Vic Venturi in the Grade Two Bobbyjo Chase at Fairyhouse in February.
Vic Venturi emerged as a serious Grand National contender when winning the Becher Chase in November and the gelding, whose name derives from the 1964 US Open golf winner Ken Venturi, has been on course for Aintree ever since.
Carrying top weight in the Becher, he saw off Keenan’s Future by five lengths and was kept to hurdles for his next two runs to protect his handicap mark until the weight for the National were announced.
Having been handed a weight of 11st 6lb, Vic Venturi returned to fences for his preparatory race, in the Bobbyjo, and won comfortably by eight lengths from Black Apalachi.
The pair go into the National on the same weight and Phil Smith, head of handicapping at the British Horseracing Authority, believes both have a strong chance on their recent form. “I would raise Vic Venturi 8lb and Black Apalachi would go up 5lb, they were first and second in the Bobbyjo Chase at Fairyhouse and were miles clear of the rest,” Smith has said.
“I wouldn't say Dessie Hughes has played the system as both horses have run in the Becher Chase and won the Becher Chase and given me every chance to assess them.”
But when it comes to assessing his chances, Hughes remains resolutely on the fence – and probably just hoping that both horses can get over more of them than he has managed thus far.
“Vic Venturi came out on top, but he was getting 7lb from Black Apalachi and beat him eight lengths, so there's very little between them,” Hughes said last week. “They're similar horses ground-wise. Both would appreciate good ground with their weights, but won't mind it softer, and both worked recently over two miles on the Flat at Navan. I couldn't separate them.”
Maybe he would settle for a dead-heat?
Dessie Hughes’s Grand National record: 2008 Black Apalachi (fell 2nd), 2009 Black Apalachi (unseated rider 22nd)
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