THE consensus was that Shishkin got himself back on track by winning a shade comfortably in the Denman Chase, but while he quelled some doubts about his likelihood of jumping off in the Gold Cup, I was amused by the shift of focus after the race, and more than one person noted that he’d had no luck this season, as if his downright refusal to set off for the 1965 Chase at Ascot was some Act of God rather than a clear sign of temperament.

Nicky Henderson said that Shishkin is now “behaving our way, not his” but while that statement is meant to be reassuring, it sounds huge alarm bells to me.

Firstly, there is an implicit admission of the gelding’s idiosyncrasies, in that there is a distinction between the way Henderson wants the horse to behave and the way Shishkin might behave if left to his own devices, and secondly a belief that you can cure a temperamental horse of its waywardness is wishful thinking.

With younger horses, you can perhaps find a root cause of bad behaviour and work on that, which is often about establishing trust, but when an old horse gets cute, particularly when it’s been in the same routine for years, then all you can do is keep them as happy as you can and hope for the best.

Like a lamb

Shishkin could go like a lamb to post in the Gold Cup, jump off fine and run the race of his life, but it will be on his terms, not anyone else’s.

It should be remembered that Ascot was far from the first time he looked like planting himself, and the fact that he had cheekpieces fitted there suggests pretty strongly that he’d been misbehaving at home – his last racecourse performance had been a winning one in Grade 1 company at Aintree after all – and although he looked sweeter at Newbury, the same could be said for him at Ascot this time last year when he was much more impressive, only to look mulish in the Ryanair.

Let’s not rewrite the script of the Denman either, where Shishkin jumped well on the whole but was slow at the cross-fence on the first circuit and at the previous fence next time around.

He came off the bridle before the home straight, which is certainly not due to the pace, and while he found enough to win comfortably after leading three from home, he was hardly ruthless in his dispatch of Protektorat, and only Hitman’s fading from the last gave the illusion of a horse staying on powerfully at the finish.

This was not a flawless performance by any means, and certainly not a match for what Galopin Des Champs achieved in the Savills Chase.

Even if you take the view that he would have won the King George (and he was hardly running away with it at Kempton), the form of that race is pretty suspect, and you get the impression hearing him talk that Henderson is aiming for the Gold Cup because he’s out of other options rather than because he relishes the battle in prospect.

If you are still considering backing Shishkin based on his undoubted class, then it behoves you to look back on his efforts in both the 2022 Champion Chase and last year’s Ryanair.

In the former, he was pulled up immediately after the first ditch having lost ground at every single fence, and while the excuse was that he had a rare bone condition, that merely proves that if you look at x-rays long enough, you’ll find a problem.

He ran on late to finish second in the Ryanair last year but again looked reluctant from an early stage and several poor leaps were a sign of reluctance rather than poor technique.

With Nico de Boinville keeping at him, he eventually conspired to show what the engine is still capable of, but there was a lot to crab in the performance.

I said last week that I would be more concerned about his temperament at Cheltenham than at Newbury and that still holds true.

Unlike last year, I doubt the kitchen sink will be thrown at him if he’s in the same mood, and the only bet I’d have on Shishkin this year is not to finish.

IT was intriguing to hear Alan King interviewed after Edwardstone had won the Game Spirit, with the trainer seeming to have had something of an epiphany while on a recent holiday.

Pondering why his horses have been winning with less regularity than they once did, King seems to have decided that he was being too soft on them at home, and has returned to an old method of sending them three times up the hill on his gallops rather than just twice.

That was the way of things when My Way De Solzen and Voy Por Ustedes were winning races at Cheltenham, he reasoned, so why change?

To fill in the blank there, King must have decided to change because lesser horses were not thriving on the same routine, and one criticism of the horses who have run disappointingly for him at the Festival was that they sometimes looked that they might have left their races behind on the gallops.

Whether that’s true or not is moot, but an easier regime hasn’t produced winners in great numbers, so it is interesting to see King changing things up again.

Make the running

I also thought it was interesting to hear Mick Fitzgerald mention in passing that King hates his horses being asked to make the running, and I thought his decision to allow Tom Cannon to make the running on Edwardstone was of more significance than his gallop routine (this was his fourth run of the season after all, so fitness should not have been a worry).

I know that King prefers his horses to be held up and I remember when Smad Place made all to win the Hennessy Wayne Hutchison told reporters that he deliberately ignored instructions to do so.

It goes without saying that not taking the opportunity of making the running when appropriate is a poor tactic, and Edwardstone was seen at a considerable disadvantage in both the Shloer Chase at Cheltenham in November when gifting Jonbon a dozen lengths and when ridden to conserve his stamina in the Silviniaco Conti.

He is a superb jumper when in full flow as he showed at Newbury, and when a horse is able to make ground in the air as he does, it is a waste of a tactical weapon if he’s not allowed to utilise it.

Stride on

The decision to allow him to stride on in the Game Spirit was the correct one and justified by a wide-margin win, but my concern is that King merely switched tactics as he felt he’d been disappointing his stable star.

Now that Edwardstone has been allowed to enjoy himself again, it may be that he reverts to type with a hold-up ride in the Queen Mother Champion Chase.

There could be plenty of speed on in that race, which might suggest that patience is key, but the one weakness in the favourite is that he could be put under pressure by a superior jumper.

Sitting five lengths behind El Fabiolo is not the way to put his suspect jumping under pressure, and I hope Alan King realises that and comes up with a plan to win in four weeks’ time.

If he does, then we could be in for an absolute corker.