THE Tingle Creek has always had that air of curiosity about it. It's something about the name, it's evocative of somewhere in the Floridian marshes or the Australian outback. There's actually a hotel on the Isle of Skye bearing the same name, but in this instance The Tenner Bet means the Tingle Creek Chase which is held in the first week of December each year at Sandown Park and which is, somewhat less mysteriously, named after a popular and prolific winner at the Surrey venue during the 1970s.
Big races over fences as we enter the Festive period usually serve as F1-like practice sessions for the grand prix event that is looming on the horizon – the Cheltenham Festival. Not that these big races aren't worthy of winning in themselves, of course. Look down the list of, for example, previous winners of the Boxing Day showpiece, the King George VI Chase, and you'll find plenty of future Gold Cup winners but they'll also have been handsomely rewarded for their efforts at Kempton with a £116,000 prize and a Grade 1 status victory on offer to the winner.
The Tingle Creek, over a shorter distance to the King George (two miles as opposed to three), produces horses that are equipped for the Queen Mother Champion Chase, the feature race on day two of Cheltenham in March. Indeed, 10 out of the last 12 winners of the Sandown race ended up at Cheltenham with eight of that number having gone on to take the Champion Chase.
There are plenty of statistics just like the one above which point out which horses are likely to go close in this year's renewal. Among the most compelling is age profile with a whopping 95% of previous winners aged nine or younger when they won this race. That doesn't do much for drawing up a shortlist with every horse in today's five-runner field falling within the age range. If we refine the age trend more stringently, 14 of the last 19 winners were in the five- to eight-year-old bracket. That's a negative against Chacun Pour Soi, the skinny favourite, who also falls down on trends pertaining to time off the track and course form. It's better news for second favourite Nube Negra, who only misses out on the fact that he has not – like the Willie Mullen's trained Chacun Pour Soi – recorded a winner at Sandown.
Of course, the Mullins horse blew Nube Negra away the last time they met in the William Hill Chase at Punchestown back in April but he hasn't raced since and that's a negative in this race.
One of the other stick-out trends is that the winner almost always comes from the first three in the betting or at odds of 6/1 or smaller. It's a similar story for horses that place in the Tingle Creek and with only two places up for grabs with bookmakers, there is little logic in taking a punt on an outsider. That leaves three runners standing – the aforementioned two – and Greaneteen, last year's second who meets almost all of the top trends and has the advantage of being trained by Paul Nicholls, a dab hand at this race with 10 winners returned since 2002.
Preference, though, is for Nube Negra, who despite that defeat by Chacun Pour Soi in Ireland has the benefit of a more recent run at Cheltenham last month, when he won the Shloer Chase in brilliant fashion by lowering the colours of Champion Chase winner Put The Kettle On and Politologue, last year's winner of the Tingle Creek.
The Danny Skelton trained seven-year-old was second in the Queen Mother ahead of Chacun Pour Soi and Greaneteen earlier this year and, if he can go one better today, it should confirm his status as a major rival to Nicky Henderson's star turn Shishkin for the renewal of the Champion Chase in March.
Selection: Nube Negra (11/4, at time of press)
Season's total: -£90
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