Jango Baie pounces late in Arkle 1-2 for pointers

Image © Healy Racing

Jango Baie was the first former point-to-pointer to get on the scoreboard at the 2025 Cheltenham Festival as he pounced late to win a dramatic My Pension Expert Arkle Challenge Trophy on Tuesday.

A Grade 1 winner over hurdles last season in the Formby at Aintree the Tiger Groom gelding had to recover from an error at the penultimate fence, and was still only in fourth position racing inside the final 150 yards.

However Nicky Henderson’s charge was eating up the ground on the climb to the line, as he got up on the drying strides to deny Only By Night by three quarters of a length.

The French-bred had started his career at Knockanard when under the care of Mick Goff where he only missed out on a debut success when collared late home by No Flies On Him.

The Wexford handler sent him to the Cheltenham Sales 11 days after that promising initial effort, with bloodstock agent Jerry McGrath securing him for £170,000 to join Henderson’s Seven Barrows team.

“We have said the whole way through that this is not a two-mile horse. If the Turners would have been here like last year then I suspect I know what we would have been in and I suspect Ballyburn might have come into that as well.
 
“He wants two and a half miles. We thought we were going to make the running, but he had no chance because he couldn’t go fast enough it was as simple as that. He was flat to the boards the whole way.
 
“I don’t know if we will see him out again this season, but if we do it won’t be over two miles.”

The runner-up, Only By Night, had also started her career point-to-pointing. After falling in consecutive four-year-old maiden races at Monksgrange and Umma House, she opened her account for Gary Murphy at Lingstown in November 2022.