Dancing Tornado

The Michael Hourigan-trained Dancing Tornado will be marked down by many as a fortuitous winner of his beginners’ chase at Wexford on Saturday, and perhaps he was, but it is not certain that he wouldn’t have won anyway, even without the final-fence exit of Give It Time. Andrew Leigh hadn’t gone for the leader at that stage, and she does stay very well (she is a beginners’ chase winner-in-waiting) but David Casey had been creeping steadily on Dancing Tornado. He is a horse who only just does enough, so you can’t hit the front too early on him, and Casey was timing his run. He jumped really well throughout, and made nice progress around the home turn. He was still two lengths down at the last, but it would have been interesting to see how much he would have found and how the duel between him and Jessica Harrington’s mare would have developed on the run-in. I’m not sure that the mare would definitely have won. Dancing Tornado may be marked down as a lucky winner for this, which would not be fair, and he may be under-rated as a result.

JP McManus’s gelding has raced plenty, but he was a really decent handicap hurdler. A winner at Leopardstown’s Christmas Festival last December, he was only beaten less than a length in a big handicap hurdle at Ascot last February. Even the bare form of his chasing debut is good, a nine-length defeat of Coscorrig, and he should be even better now over fences if he is stepped up in distance.

24th October 2009