Robbie Power on Cheltenham’s Shame, Canardier & Dinons!

What happened at Cheltenham yesterday was an absolute disgrace.

That’s not the first time this has happened. It happened to Jane Mangan a few years ago in the Foxhunters. She was on course to win the race and her horse jinked and went out through the tape.

In this day and age, Cheltenham is the pinnacle of National Hunt racing. A race course like Cheltenham shouldn’t have a piece of tape as a guideline of where to go. Can they not get a plastic rail that joins in to another plastic rail and, as soon as the horses go past, just pull it back together?

It would take three minutes to do it.

Cheltenham should hang their heads in shame.

In this day and age this shouldn’t be happening. If it happened at a point to point, fair enough, but at supposedly the best race course in the world for National Hunt racing this shouldn’t be happening.

Canardier
Canardier’s win in the Ballmore Novices’ Hurdle was a good boost for the Irish form. It was a 1-2-3 in that race for the Irish and…

Canardier was very, very impressive.

He was given a very confident ride by Barry Geraghty. He was still happy going to the last a length and a half down but he still picked the horse in front up.

He did it very impressively. He’s a very good bumper horse and has been threatening a performance like that over hurdles. It just goes to show the quality of the opposition he’s been facing in Ireland. He was a good third to Woodland Opera in Down Royal so that form has worked out very, very well.

Dinons
A couple of the races he has won have been of fairly low grade. Gordon has placed him very, very well so it looks a lot bigger test today at Cheltenham. We’ll see his full credentials today.