For Dan Skelton, last year’s Queen Mother Champion Chase must’ve been a bittersweet experience. As pre-race favourite Chacun Pour Soi gradually faded with the finish line approaching, the chance opened up for the Skelton-trained Nube Negra to steal victory. Unfortunately for him, Henry de Bromhead’s Put The Kettle On stormed clear to land the win instead.
A second-place finish is not a result for a horse who was an 11/1 shot before the race began, but Skelton would still have been disappointed that Nube Negra could not quite get the job done. With Dan’s brother Harry Skelton in the saddle that day, it just wasn’t enough to deny the in-form De Bromhead.
Almost a year on, the chance has arisen once again for Nube Negra to cause something of an upset in the Queen Mother Champion Chase. The build-up to the 2022 edition of the event has been dominated by the intriguing battle between Nicky Henderson’s Shishkin and Willie Mullins’ Energumene, with the former the current pre-race favourite in the Champion Chase betting market. When you factor in the presence of Chacun Pour Soi once again, it’s going to take a stellar performance if Nube Negra is going to upset the apple cart, as it were.
The eight-year-old’s form has been somewhat mixed in the 12 months since the 2021 Cheltenham Festival. A third-place finish in the Irish Champion Chase at Punchestown followed the second-place finish in the Queen Mother at Cheltenham, with Chacun Pour Soi and Allaho finishing ahead of Nube Negra.
A well-earned victory over Politologue, Put The Kettle On and Rouge Vif at the November Cheltenham meeting represented a strong start to the season, although expectations have since been tempered by a distant fourth-place finish in the Betfair Tingle Creek Chase at Sandown in December.
However, at odds of 10/1 for the Queen Mother Champion Chase this year, it’s not out of the question that the eight-year-old could produce the goods in the day two Cheltenham Festival showpiece. Indeed, Skelton is quietly confident of his chances ahead of the race, and he clearly believes that Nube Negra has what it takes to go one better this year.
“He was second in the race last year,” Skelton told the Racing Post, “and I think he's still very much in the mix this time, despite being fourth in the Tingle Creek. I just think Sandown came too soon for him, so we'll keep him fresh – I think that's when he's at his best – and hope for decent conditions.
“He's a high achiever when things are in his favour, and the better the ground, the better his chance, although as he's got older he seems to cope better with softer.”
Conditions will no doubt come into play if we’re going to see the best of Nube Negra, but there’s no doubt that he is a gelding with the qualities necessary to win a race of such stature on his day. With the Irish dominance at the Cheltenham Festival continuing unabated, it would be a great personal triumph for Warwickshire-based Skelton if his horse were to claim a famous victory.
