stars out in force on Boxing Day

the big Boxing Day (St. Stephen´s Day for our Irish friends) cards have often been spoilt by bad weather, but there appear to be no problems this year and all fixtures are expected to go ahead.
Kempton has pride of place and stages 3 Grade One races, all with exceptionally strong, but not very large, fields. At 15.00 CET the Feltham Novices Chase over 3 miles has 6 runners, 3 of them with clear claims to championship honours - Grands Crus (David Pipe/ Tom Scudamore), Bobs Worth (Nicky Henderson/Barry Geraghty) and Silvianico Conti (Paul Nicholls/ Ruby Walsh). Our preference is for the first named, who stays this trip well and over hurdles was only beaten by Big Bucks, but the other two are almost equally smart. Th Christma Hurdle at 15.35 has only 5 runners, but again 3 of them are serious Chletenham contenders: Binocular (Henderson/ Tony McCoy), Overturn (Donald McCain/ Jason Maguire) and Rock on Ruby (Nicholls/ Walsh). Binocular is not the most consistent, but was an easy winner of this race last year, beating the tough Overturn by 4 lengths. Although the strong front-runner Overturn reversed the form when they met at Newastle last time, we expect Binocular to com e out on top again, but the top class handicapper Rock on Ruby cannot be lightly discarded.
The King George VI Chase at 16.10 is the main event and is the best race of the season so far, with the Clive Smith-owned and Paul Nicholls-trained Kauto Star (Walsh) and Master Minded (Daryl Jacob) being taken on by Long Run (Henderson/ Sam Waley-Cohen) among others. Long Run won this last year and went on to score at Cheltenham as well, but on his only race since was put in his place at Haydock by Kauto Star, who had won this previously four times in succession. Kauto Star turns 12 next week, and there must be a question over his keeping his form, and last year he appeared to be below his best, while the much younger Long Run, who jumped poorly at Haydock, can be expected to give a much better performance this time. Long Run is the reigning champ and bookmakers and punters seemed convinced that he will repeat his victory of last season, but we are not so sure. Master Minded is trying the distance of 3 miles for the first time, but if he gets it will be a danger to all, whi le Captain Chris and Somersby are others not proven over the distance. With two front-runners in the field, this will be a true test and we expect the two past winners to come out on top- but in which order??
Big race on Tuesday the 28th is the Welsh Grand National at 15.10 at Chepstow. The ground will be very testing here and not all the runners can be guaranteed to stay the trip. Jonjo O´Neill´s Synchronising won this last year, and if he turns out again (not certain as yet) will be our selection, otherwise we will go for his stable cpmpanion Galaxy Rock, but this is always a very tough race.
There is also an excellent meeting in Ireland at Leopardstown, with the main events being the Lexus Chase on Wednesday, usually the top Irish prep for the Gold Cup, and the Festival Hurdle on Thursday, in which Champion Hurdler Hurricane Fly could make his seasonal debut - but this also is not yet 100% certain.