Horse Power: Protektorat can win the Betfair Chase again at Haydock Park

PROTEKTORAT can win the Betfair Chase (Registered as The Lancashire Chase) (GBB Race) (3pm) for a second successive season at Haydock Park on Saturday afternoon.

Dan Skelton’s eight-year-old can hold off the Paul Nicholls-trained Bravemansgame to land back-to-back wins in the Grade One feature on Merseyside. The extended 3m1f contest has seen several horses score more than one win over the years and the returning Protektorat can join record four-time winner Kauto Star, triple heroes Cue Card and Bristol De Mai and dual scorer Silviniaco Conti to land another Grade One success at Haydock.

The eight-year-old, who is part-owned by former Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson, is a top-class performer over this distance when the ground is on the soft side. He had won at the top level in the 2m4f Manifesto Novices’ Chase at the 2021 Randox Grand National Festival at Aintree Racecourse. He also scored back at Aintree in the Group Two Many Clouds Chase later that year. While he has been third and fifth in the last two runnings of the Boodles Cheltenham Gold Cup at the Cheltenham Festival. But it was at Haydock last year that he put in his best effort when scoring by 11 lengths in soft ground. Like then he will be making his seasonal reappearance and despite some of Skelton’s recent runners needing their first run of the season, Protektorat will be ready for what is his primary early target. He will no doubt bid for a third crack at the Gold Cup in the spring, but the Betfair looks his best chance of another Grade One victory. And he can get the better of Bravemansgame to bring up the double.

Bravemansgame will be using this as a stepping stone to his own bid for back-to-back wins in the King George VI Chase at Kempton