Racing: Eating like a horse

This year's Cheltenham Festival increasingly resembles a play with most of the rehearsals cancelled, the actors nervously grappling with an unfathomable script. So many race meetings have been lost to the weather that few pre-Festival trials have taken place. Form lines are thin on the ground. In the coming weeks, `Festival Focus' will be assessing prospects of Cheltenham-bound horses whose talents have yet to be seriously tested on a track this winter.

MAAMUR has been quietly backed down to 25-1 for the Gold Cup even though he has yet to race this season. The grey won the Ritz Club Chase at the Festival last year but the blue riband is his only entry for Cheltenham this time.

If the horse had his way, however, he would be staying home on 13 March. ``Maamur dreams of only one thing in life - eating. He loves his food, that and sleeping,'' Henry Daly, assistant trainer at Tim Forster's Shropshire stables, explained. ``He's also the sweetest horse you could find. A 10- year-old child could ride him around the yard.''

But this quality chaser will soon be called on to pay his grocery bills. ``We're hoping to run him in the next couple of weeks. He seems to like the mud,'' Daly said. The grey has not raced since March because of the freeze-up and fast ground, but it was always the plan for him to make a late return.

Maamur has yet to confirm he is up to Gold Cup class but over the last 10 years only two winners of the race had proved in the previous season to be up to that standard. He made exceptional progress last season, winning three of his five races and, like another Gold Cup candidate, his stablemate Dublin Flyer, showed agility over Cheltenham's tricky obstacles.

Bets should be withheld until ground conditions turn in his favour. But signs of Cotswold turf softening in early March would warrant intervention in the ante-post market.