Underrated vs Overrated (Greaneteen, Protektorat and Allaho)

I’m feeling slightly under the weather and not up to making a video. I did still want to give you my thoughts on this weekend’s racing in the form of ‘Underrated vs Overrated’.

TINGLE CREEK — GREANETEEN

I will put Greaneteen’s Tingle Creek win, firmly in the OVERRATED category. I’m finding it very hard to take the form literally given the disappointments from the two market principles. I had my doubts about Chacun Pour Soi prior to the race given all his best form has come on flat tracks and his tendency to improve for a run. It was by far his worst performance to date and reports have since come stating he was ‘very sore behind’. He was not the only disappointment to come from the Willie Mullins yard this weekend and even if nothing had come to light I would happily have put a line through this run.

Nube Negra also disappointed this weekend following an impressive win in the Schloer Chase. It was a shock decision to see him even turn up here given Dan Skelton had stated a few times how this horse is best when fresh. Like Chacun Pour Soi this was too bad to be true, Dan Skelton has since come out and said they will go straight to the Queen Mother Champion Chase with him.

With both Greaneteen’s main rivals out of the race, the remaining horse’s Hitman and Captain Guinness had to find 13lbs on official ratings. Greaneteen beat them as expected and won what can only be described as a poor Grade 1.

MANY CLOUDS — PROTEKTORAT

For me, this is another horse that I will be looking to take on next time out and will go into the OVERRATED category. It looked a fascinating little race prior to the off but with the power of hindsight, this doesn’t look the most trustworthy piece of form.

Market leader Native River has run a fantastic race in defeat given he’s now an 11yr old. I anticipate he will come on bundles for the run, remember that it was only last year he was beaten by Lake View Lad (149) in the same contest. The only other horse in the race who you may have thought could feature was Imperial Aura who was pulled up, this seemed a stretch though given he hadn’t completed in his last 3 starts.

People will say you can only beat what’s put in front of you and with that Protektorat did win by 20+ lengths. But talks have started about him being a Cheltenham Gold Cup player and I fail to see the angle.

JOHN DURKAN — ALLAHO

I found this a really difficult race to weigh up but I’ve landed on this being a marginally UNDERRATED performance (Potentially just a properly rated performance). I had Allaho down as a horse to take on given his record first time out and the depth to the race.

My immediate reaction to this was a fairly unoriginal opinion that Asterion Forlonge would’ve won had he stayed up. But this is jumps racing and he clearly has issues in that area. There were definitely some disappointments in behind, namely Envoi Allen and Fakir D’oudaries but I was still impressed with Allaho.

Had he not won this weekend I think you could make excuses for the run. The rumours were that he wasn’t fully fit for the race, he jumped out to his left and he was taking on race-fit rivals. He overcame all of that and slogged out a win, I don’t know what’s next for him but he will be very hard to beat if remaining over this middling distance.