Jonbon was the winner but attrition was the word. Sandown’s Tingle Creek Chase is famous for rocket pace and spring-heeled jumping, but in this heavy ground it was closer to tractor time.
Jonbon is the most elegant of thoroughbreds, with a neat star on his forehead to match the white of the silks cap of his owner, JP McManus. At Cheltenham last time he had been the picture of streamlined athleticism and he looked all of that again as he outjumped the bold leader Haddex Des Obeaux down the back straight.
But it’s a long way home from the bottom of the Sandown hill and as Jonbon jumped slightly left at the Pond Fence three from home, there were even hopes that Haddex Des Obeaux’s relentless enterprise could bring off a third win on the card for trainer Gary Moore.
How weak of us to doubt him. “I was still travelling but I wanted to fill him up before tackling the last two,” said the jockey Nico de Boinville, whose clipped tones, thinning hair and Norman Conquest surname could delude you that he was a high-ranking executive rather than ice-cool jockey. “It was always going to be hard work, but he won well enough.”
Last year’s Tingle Creek winner Edwardstone ran past an understandably tiring Haddex Des Obeaux to be a respectable second. The trainer Nicky Henderson’s previous victories have come with subsequent Champion Chase winners Sprinter Sacre and Altior and that event will now be Jonbon’s big target in March. Henderson had made the news earlier in the day when he withdrew Constitution Hill and Shishkin from the rescheduled Fighting Fifth Hurdle because of Sandown’s rain-sodden ground. Disappointing as it may have been for racing fans, it was hard to argue with Henderson’s reasoning that with both horses targeted for big events at Kempton on Boxing Day, a hard slog would not have been sensible preparation. But the absences opened the way to the 11-year-old Not So Sleepy, whose career makes both of them look like callow aspirants.
