Galopin Des Champs still has something to prove

OPINION seemed split on Galopin Des Champs in the Paddy Power Irish Gold Cup at Leopardstown on Saturday and, as a whole, the race did not rate overly highly.

The Cheltenham Gold Cup ante-post favourite won a slowly run race and earned a Racing Post Rating of 174, which would have been enough to win just three of the last ten runnings of the Gold Cup.

The runner-up Stattler (163) would have benefited from a stronger test of stamina, with the slow pace not suiting. Fury Road (162) achieved the same RPR in third as when filling the same position in the Savills Chase in December.

Galopin Des Champs and Stattler both remain likely to achieve higher RPRs with a more strongly run race.

El Fabiolo won the Goffs Irish Arkle Novice Chase 35 minutes earlier and achieved a career-best RPR of 167. The time of the race was good, with a solid pace set by Dysart

Dynamo (156), and compares very favourably with the handicap chase over the same distance later on the card. The race was nine seconds faster, the equivalent of 36 lengths.

Banbridge (156) finished second and will be suited by a step up in trip, while Appreciate It (156) did well in third without running to the best of his form over hurdles.

The performance puts El Fabiolo at the top of the pecking order for the two-mile novice chasers on RPRs, with the mark of 167 eclipsing Jonbon’s 164 when he won the Henry VIII Novices’ Chase at Sandown in December.

In the last decade the average RPR required to win the Arkle at Cheltenham is 166, a rating El Fabiolo has surpassed, and he should be at the head of the betting market.

Jonbon finished a neck in front of El Fabiolo at Aintree last season over hurdles, but it would be no surprise to see a reverse of this at Cheltenham next month. Whatever the outcome, the Arkle certainly looks like it will be a race to savour.