Juntos Ganamos

I often scan through the social media posts of Paris-Turf and Jour de Galop to pick up anything that I may have missed. Often it’s a simple exercise to read through the trainers comments after a recent winner or to find out future running plans for a promising 3-year-old, but occasionally I come across something more intriguing. That happened this week when I noticed a post from Paris-Turf that stated that David Cottin had announced his intention to run Juntos Ganamos in the King George at Kempton. In most years, I might have seen this as a bit of bravado from the trainer, or even a social appearance for the owners, but the more that I began to think about it, the more I came round to the idea that this could be worth their while.

This is far from a vintage King George field. Fastorslow is out for the season with an injury and Willie Mullins has scratched all of his entries and seems unlikely to have a runner. As a result, we are left with a market headed by Grey Dawning, who has just 6-weeks to recover from a gruelling 3-miles in the Haydock mud in the Betfair Chase. He is the most likely winner amongst those with a confirmed entry , but there will always be a doubt about what kind of mark that race may have left and I think that the connections of Juntos Ganamos will have had that in mind when they looked through the current entries.

He has a rating of 76-kilos in France, which the BHA Handicapper would rate at 152, but that perhaps underestimates a horse who was a Grade 1 winner as a 4-year-old in the Prix Ferdinand Dufaure and who has some smart form with the best steeplechasers in France. He was last seen finishing 3rd in the Prix La Haye Jousselin behind Gran Diose (beaten 12-lengths) in November. The 3-miles and 3-furlongs perhaps stretched his stamina that day and it should be noted that he was the horse to go with Il Est Francais on the front end and he perhaps paid for those exertions in the closing stages. Kempton looks much more likely to suit him. He has a high cruising speed and although he is prone to the odd jumping mistake (he has fallen in 2 of his 4 starts in Grade 1 company), Kempton is not the stiff jumping test that Auteuil can present and I’d be fairly confident that he will get round. His latest win came in the Prix Heros XII in October, when he had both Gran Diose and Gold Tweet in behind him. Both of them were being readied for later targets, but he showed all of his class to control that race from the front and the 2-mile 6-furlong trip around Auteuil would represent a similar test to the 3-miles at Kempton on 26th December.

Like many horses in the market, he needs to be supplemented for the race on 18th December, but there is certainly a case to be made that his connections can hope to get a return on that investment. He has been priced up by William Hill and at the time of writing, he is a 14/1 chance. Is that a fair price? In reality I would probably want slightly better, especially if either Fact to File or Spillane’s Tower are put into the contest, but he does have an each-way chance and I think he is capable of getting to a mark in the low 160s. In a relatively shallow renewal of this race, especially amongst the British trained entries, that might be enough to hit the frame.