Santa’s 1767/1 Christmas Treble!

Envoi Allen winning the 2019 Champion Bumper

Christmas is fast approaching and Santa is bringing all the festive cheer. His slay will, of course, be full of presents and sporting gold! The racing this festive period promises to be something special, with Grade 1 races aplenty.

The King George is the feature contest at Kempton, but we have fantastic racing in Ireland to look forward to as well! We’ve been looking through the Festive cards and have found several horses baring colours similar to those Santa will be donning in the coming days.

We’ve come up with a treble of the biggest chances, to bring you Santa’s Christmas treble!

(26th) 2.15 Leopardstown – Blackbow

He’ll be taking on his well-touted stable-mate Energumene, but Blackbow has an excellent chance of usurping him on Boxing Day. A very smart bumper horse, he was seen just four times over hurdles last term, where he proved extremely frustrating.

Although he was winless in that sphere, he quickly made amends with a dominant chasing debut at Navan last month. Beating a smart field that included Entoucas and Defi Bleu with the minimum of fuss, chasing is clearly his game.

He has any amount of improvement under the hood and commands a huge amount of respect for his powerful connections.

(26th) 2.25 Kempton – Ballyandy

He’s yet to win at Grade 1 level, but Ballyandy doesn’t know how to run a bad race and has hit the frame in all three of his runs this term. He didn’t finish far behind Silver Streak when third at Cheltenham last time and he placed in this race twelve months ago.

Epatante will be tough to beat in this contest, but there’s just two pounds splitting the next four in the market. Ballyandy is the consistent one and he matches up very closely with Silver Streak. Forecast rain is in his favour and he sits at very tempting each-way odds.

There’s a lack of pace in this contest which means he may be able to poach the lead, which will give him an excellent chance of hitting the frame at the very least.

(27th) 1.10 Kempton – A Plus Tard

Winning this race twelve months ago over Chacun Pour Soi, A Plus Tard has a good chance of repeating the feat twelve months on. On the face of it, his seasonal return defeat at Navan was very disappointing, but he was turned over in the same fashion last year too.

He should come on leaps and bounds for the run and he remains lightly-raced for these connections. The ground will be in his favour and with Henry De Bromhead’s string in excellent form, he’s a big price to go close as he bids to go back to back.