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I get a totally different feeling with altior than douvan. It’s the same feeing as sprinter sacre.
I don’t see how anyone can say with confidence douvan wins and if they do then for me they are either bias or don’t know much.
Altior won the supreme much more convincingly than douvan and I believe the supreme altior won was the best since Al ferofs.
Altior has been incredible in his novice season just as much as douvan and I feel he will almost certainly win the arkle in even better fashion than douvan did.
The only negative is that douvan has probably improved again since his novice season.
However if The present Altior met douvan in last years arkle, I feel he would win quite nicely.As I alluded to on another thread the other day , why would Nicky Henderson jeopardize what is potentially easy first place winnings in the Arkle by taking on Douvan in the Champion Chase ?
Henderson is a shrewd operator and he will do what is best for his horse , and at this stage of Altior’s chasing career , I’m sure it doesn’t include taking on Douvan sooner than he would ideally like .
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I can understand that some of you are against a Altior vs. Douvan clash, simply because of your ante-post bets (Altior to win the Arkle and Douvan to win the CC).
From my point of view I can also understand what Altior’s connections are thinking and that you should take one step at a time, especially with a novice chaser.
However, considering Thistlecrack’s ambitious target and what he has shown so far, there is no reason why Altior should hide against the more experienced boys over 2 miles. He would be running over a trip which will be absolutely no problem for him, he is a far better jumper than Thistlecrack is and he always posted very fast times in all of his chases (1st chase being only exception, but he was fence ahead of his sole rival). No one ever questioned his jumping nor his stamina, he always had plenty in tank at the end of the race.
I would love to see him against Douvan this season, but I can also understand if it doesn’t happen.The trick with Altior now will be cooling off some of the exuberance, both in his travelling style and his jumping. The latter is wonderful to behold in its scope and athleticism, but it’s not the ideal way to conserve energy.
De Boinville said after riding Might Bite the other day that his job with that horse had been to try to flatten his jumping and iron out the big leaps. He might find himself with the same job on his hands with Altior, who, to my eye, travelled in quite a relaxed fashion in the hands of Noel Fehily compared with Nico’s last two rides on the horse.
I’d love to see Altior V Douvan and would back Altior without hesitation in that. High class horses often have an extra gear; Altior has at least two. But I would like to see him calm down a bit. He’s not obviously keen (though he was when less experienced), nor is he a strong traveller in the mould of MTOY or Harchibald, in that he’s always working and stretching his neck. But I’m pretty sure he’s doing much more than he has to. He wasn’t seen again after The Supreme last season and it could be simply that Nicky was protecting a valuable asset. But I wonder if the race took a bit of getting over.
The trainer seems determined to avoid Douvan this season and I suspect Mullins will do the necessary avoiding in future seasons. This particular dual of the champions might never happen.
The trick with Altior now will be cooling off some of the exuberance, both in his travelling style and his jumping. The latter is wonderful to behold in its scope and athleticism, but it’s not the ideal way to conserve energy.
I think you are getting carried away with the jumping analysis. As I said before there is nothing in his level of performance to suggest that he is taking too much out of himself. That is the only guide anyone can use from this distance. There is no evidence to suggest he needs to change anything.
Stilvi while my natural reaction would be to agree with you, it’s instances like this where imo it pays to listen and take note of someone (Joe) who really knows what he’s talking about on this particular matter. Can’t imagine he’d have this opinion for no good reason.
The thing I really like about Altior is that he really finds when off the bridle. Some horses that look “brilliant” don’t find when they need to find, Altior does.
I’d back him in a match with Douvan. We haven’t seen Douvan come under real pressure yet and in Buveur D’Air, Min and Petit Mouchoir (from that red hot Supreme last year) it can be reasonably argued that Altior has beaten better horses than Douvan has to date.
The Post is reporting that Altior has been given an official rating of 170 after Saturday’s stroll, one pound higher than that awarded to Sprinter Sacre after his imperious romp in the same Newbury contest five years ago.
For comparison, Douvan currently has an official rating of 174.
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