A lot is riding on the Sprinter Sacre Clarence House Chase comeback

http://www.theguardian.com/sport/blog/2015/jan/16/sprinter-sacre-clarence-house-comeback

Version 0 of 1.

There must be dozens of fine professional athletes who will return to action after an injury in Britain on Saturday afternoon, most of them on either a football or rugby pitch, but there is only one with the capacity to shift a seven-figure sum into, or out of, the nation’s purses and pockets. And he just happens to be the one who cannot talk, to let us know how difficult the last few months have been and how he really feels about getting back into the heat of competition.

Racing’s absorption with Sprinter Sacre and his return to the track in Saturday’s Clarence House Chase at Ascot could seem a little overblown. He is only one horse among many, he has been away for a long time and the build-up to the Cheltenham Festival in March has been proceeding well enough in his absence.

Yet horses like Sprinter Sacre, and moments like this one, have been the essence of the game for 250 years. It is 386 days since Sprinter Sacre pulled up at halfway in the Desert Orchid Chase at Kempton and was found to be suffering from an irregular heartbeat, and a further 248 since his last victory, at the end of a romp through Grade One feature events at the three major racing Festivals in the spring of 2013. No one can know for sure how much of his exceptional talent remains intact but everyone has an opinion, the accuracy of which will become apparent in less than five minutes on Saturday afternoon.

And thanks to the circumstances it is also possible to back that opinion with hard cash at odds that make it feel worthwhile. Sprinter Sacre’s price for the Clarence House has been all over the place already this week, from odds-on on Monday out to 2-1 on Thursday, before settling at around evens.

That in itself is a sign of the uncertainty that surrounds the nine-year-old, who was not just the best two-mile chaser of his generation two seasons ago but one of the very best of any generation. Without the question marks he would be long odds-on. Instead Sprinter Sacre’s price for victory sits smack in the middle, at the tipping point between likely and unlikely.

Even Nicky Henderson and Barry Geraghty, Sprinter Sacre’s trainer and jockey, cannot be sure what will happen on Saturday.

For Henderson the race looks like the least-worst decision, the one that keeps his options open as he plots a return to the Queen Mother Champion Chase at Cheltenham, the race in which Sprinter Sacre produced one of the great Festival performances in 2013. An injured footballer can work his way back slowly from the subs bench but a racehorse trainer has less time and space for manoeuvre. The ground is softer than ideal but it could be worse at Newbury next month, which looks the only alternative if Sprinter Sacre is to have a run before the Festival.

Geraghty, meanwhile, suggested that his horse felt like “the Sprinter of old” after a schooling session at Newbury last month. But Geraghty did not have a target on his back there. Saturday’s race includes three high-class opponents, including two – Dodging Bullets and Twinlight – who won at Grade One level last time out and will not give him an inch.

What the Newbury exercise did suggest is that the basic mechanics of an outstanding racehorse are still in place. Sprinter Sacre’s physique and cruising speed were as impressive as ever and so too – one ring-rusty mistake apart – was his jumping. Celia Marr, the world authority on equine cardiology who has overseen Sprinter Sacre’s recovery, was also on hand to confirm that all seemed well with his heart.

What it could not show is whether all the elements can still work together with the same drive and to the same overwhelming effect that made Sprinter Sacre one of the greats. He could, in theory, run two stone below his best form on Saturday and still beat Dodging Bullets, who is 30lb his inferior on Timeform’s ratings.

But if the innate talent and fire which made him special has been diminished by time and his experience at Kempton – if he is now, in other words, just another very good steeplechaser – then one of the in-form, up-and-comers will probably be too good for him.

Sprinter Sacre could bolt up or pull up, scrape home or go down fighting, march on towards the Cheltenham Festival or slip into retirement, stamp his authority or meekly surrender, and his even-money price is the clearest possible sign that no one, from Henderson and Geraghty to the punters on the high street, can have any firm idea about what will happen at three o’clock on Saturday afternoon.

They say that money talks. Just this once it has shrugged its shoulders and looked towards the heavens instead.