Best bet for Irish Grand National: Chemical Energy spearheads eight-strong Gordon Elliott team
- Steve Jones
- 10 April 2023
Fairyhouse takes centre stage on a busy Easter Monday race card, and Tipstrr pundit Steve Jones has picked out Chemical Energy as his best bet to land the €275,000 prize in the Irish Grand National.
Having won this prize in 2018 with General Principle, and then providing the two most recent runners-up, Gordon Elliott sends out a team of eight this year, more than a quarter of the 30-strong field, and he can land the prize once again with Chemical Energy, a lightly-raced chaser with an abundance of stamina.
Chemical Energy has run just five times over fences so far, recording two wins and a second from the last four of them.
Having won a novices' chase over last September (as expected), he improved massively for stepping up to three miles for his second assignment over fences the following month, when he was sent off as the outsider of the three runners but came home a long way clear of the other pair with his rider saying afterwards that the seven-year-old just got better the further he went.
Unsuited by the going at Naas in late January, Chemical Energy failed to complete the hat-trick but that run is easy to ignore because he should not really have run on such testing ground.
The best performance of his career so far was his runner-up spot in the Grade 2 NH Challenge Cup at last month's Cheltenham Festival, when the only one able to beat him over his first taste of a marathon distance was Gaillard Du Mesnil, who is one of the favourites for next weekend's Aintree Grand National with a mark of 155.
Having gone close to beating Gaillard Du Mesnil (on level terms) over a marathon trip (he was only beaten in the last half-furlong), Chemical Energy looks a good bet off a mark of 147 (8lbs lower than that rival) over today's 29-furlong contest.
Of the others, one of Chemical Energy's stablemates, Defi Bleu, could easily out-run his big early prices. His only previous handicap over these fences, at exactly this time last season, resulted in Defi Bleu winning a 14-runner event over three miles.
He has no issues in the stamina department either, having placed in the Grade B Grand National Trial at Punchestown in February and also in last year's Cork Grand National.
Off the same mark as for those two previous marathon runs, there is no reason why Defi Bleu can't put in another big performance in a marathon handicap.
