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Hello. Good morning. Feeling well, or at least better than I do anyway? I was OK in the pub at lunchtime yesterday … and had just two pints of London Pride and left early as I was cooking. But it was the champers; the vino and the opiudding wine along with the gargantuan lunch that did for me. Memo to self for 2026 – pace yourself on Christmas day afternoon! Well, it’s going to be a whirlwind with eight meetings in the UK and three in Ireland to keep across. They’ve already started running at Down Royal and Sedgefield. We’ll have previews and the betting for the TV races and any news that breaks. Please stay tuned and do join in with any comments on this busy and exciting day’s racing.
Preamble
Greg Wood
Good morning from a chilly Sunbury-on-Thames, where what may well turn out to be one of the last runnings of the King George VI Chase at its historic and traditional home at Kempton Park is due off at 2.30pm this afternoon.
And if this is indeed the first act of the King George’s Kempton swansong, it is certainly going out in style.
This year’s race was being talked up as one of the best for years even when it seemed likely that Willie Mullins would send either Gaelic Warrior or Fact To File over to Kempton. As it has turned out, he’s sent them both, and they will face, among others, two top-drawer British-trained second-season chasers in The Jukebox Man – in the colours of Harry Redknapp, no less – and Jango Baie.
Last year’s winner, Banbridge, is a 14-1 shot, which tells its own tale, while another previous Grade One winner here over the King George trip, Il Est Francais, is 20-1. The young and improving Djelo is 14-1 to follow up his win in the Peterbrough Chase at Huntingdon earlier this month and Master Chewy, at 100-1, is the only runner in the eight-strong field with no realistic chance at their best.
The supporting card is fairly tasty too, with the unbeaten Sir Gino reverting to hurdles in place of his resting stable companion, Constitution Hill, in the Christmas Hurdle at 1.55pm.
Kempton is always bursting at the seams for its biggest day of the year and the fact that there is no Premier League football this afternoon has probably added a good few hundred to the attendance too.
So if you’re not on the way here already, it’s probably too late, but the good news is that you will, as always, be able to follow all the action from the comfort of your sofa here on the Guardian’s live blog. Some picks for the ITV card are here – with the usual caveats about investments going down as well as up – and the action is underway at 12.45pm.
