Grandeur d’Ame could be hard to beat at Stratford on Thursday

October 28

Happily, both our runners so far this week have won – Betterforeveryone confirmed his love for Bangor but looks capable of winning a long-distance chase whichever direction he goes this season – and Alan will be hoping for a successful raid at Stratford on Thursday, when we are represented by Blue Sky Dreaming, Grandeur d’Ame and Galaxy Star.

Grandeur d’Ame has to give weight to all his seven rivals on his first run since pulling up in the Topham Trophy over the big Aintree fences last April.

We can safely put a line through his previous effort when trying three miles plus in the Ultima at the Cheltenham Festival. It proved a joke of a race as the starter took three goes to get the horses away, and when he did press the button several of the field were either behind or facing the wrong way, Grandeur d’Ame being the principal sufferer when losing many lengths.

However, those two races apart, Grandeur d’Ame enjoyed a good season. He always goes well fresh and won first time out at Chepstow, and then but for a mistake at the last he would probably have finished in the frame in the December Gold Cup at Cheltenham for the second year running.

Grandeur d’Ame was also unlucky not to kick-start 2025 with a win, being pipped a short head when producing a career-best performance at Cheltenham’s January meeting, and he is entered for the prestigious Paddy Power Gold Cup at Prestbury Park a fortnight on Saturday as well as the Coral Gold Cup (formerly the Hennessy) at Newbury two weeks later.

Never more comfortable than when he gets into a rhythm up with the leaders early on in his race, Grandeur d’Ame will be as much suited to Stratford as he is Cheltenham, and on his only previous visit to the Midlands course in the spring of 2023 he made all for a runaway success.

So we can expect Tom Bellamy to again make plenty of use of him around this sharp track, and I hope and believe that he’ll be hard to beat in this company.

Earlier in the afternoon Bellamy will be aboard Blue Sky Dreaming, who takes on older horses in the two-mile novice hurdle. He ran well for a long way on his debut at Doncaster in March, and, while he sure to need this comeback run after a long absence, Blue Sky Dreaming is definitely one for the future as he comes from the same family as Robert Waley-Cohen’s Cheltenham Gold Cup winner Long Run.

Another who is closely related to a Gold Cup winner, in her case Ascot Gold Cup hero Fame And Glory, is Galaxy Star, who makes her debut in the fillies junior bumper, in which all but one of the 14 runners go into the finale unraced.

As we suggested earlier in the week, Heroics will definitely be worth a second look when he runs at Bath on Thursday, having shown plenty of promise on his debut over the course three weeks ago.