Two For Gold

It may pay to retain faith in Two For Gold for another little while yet. He was pulled up in the Ladbrokes Trophy on his penultimate run, and he could only finish third in the three-mile handicap chase at Kempton on Saturday on his latest start, when he was sent off as favourite, but it may be that we will not see the best of him until he can get back on genuine soft ground again.

The ground was unseasonably good at Newbury on Ladbrokes Trophy day, and it was no worse than good to soft on the chase course at Kempton on Saturday. It appears that he is at his best when he can get into a rhythm up in a prominent position on soft ground, as he did when he won the Grade 2 Hampton Chase at Warwick last January.

His jumping suffered on the ground at the pace through the middle part of the race on Saturday, he got shuffled back from a decent position just behind the leaders, and he had to do a lot of running to recover that ground. In the circumstances, he did well to get back onto the coat-tails of the leaders as they raced around the home turn. He actually manoeuvred his way into contention at the second last fence but, while he stayed on well from there, he just couldn’t get to Double Shuffle or Ami Desbois. Even so, he was only beaten a total of two lengths.

The handicapper raised him by 2lb to a mark of 149 for Saturday’s run, but that is still a mark that he could surpass now when he races next on soft ground. That was just his seventh run over fences, so he still has the potential to go higher.
Kempton, 9^th January 2021