CHELTENHAM – FRIDAY

2:30 Albert Bartlett

Alaphillipe (Paddy Brennan)

We bought him over from Ireland after running in Point to Points and he has been fantastic for his owners. He is their first horse and to be honest we are stil pinching ourselves really; he has been unbelievable. What you see with ‘big Phil’ is what you get, he’s such a kind gentle horse and his owner Nic Brereton is more familiar with greyhounds and has them in training with his good mate Carl who is petrified of horses, but in normal times he’s been down to the yard and is never afraid of going into the stable with him because he’s so placid and lovely to have around the yard. Everything was against him at Taunton in January when he got beat and bumped into some highly rated horses which sort of scupppered our Handicap mark because we were looking at the EBF Final, so we had to switch to plan B and take him to Haydock where he ended up winning very comfortably on his first start at the trip. That was on soft but he goes on any ground and as we saw, he gets the distance well. He’s a strong traveller and very straightforward and I’m really looking forward to running him.

Ask A Honey Bee (Connor Brace)

Unfortunately nothing came to light after being pulled up last time at Doncaster in the G2 River Don but a few others who we’d met previously all ran below par and I think the first four in the betting all pulled up, so it was a funny sort of race and it’s one I’m just going to put a line through and march on to Cheltenham. He was a very good Bumper horse and if he can recapture what he did at the start of his hurdling career I’d be hopeful of a good show.

GOLD CUP THOUGHTS

This is a fantastic race but I don’t really think you can look past Al Boum Photo. He’s had the same preparation as last year and Willie Mullins is just the master when it comes to getting horses right on the day. I’d love to see Native River run a big race because Colin Tizard is going to hand the reins over to Joe at the end of the season and they’ve all had a very tough time of late so it would be great if he could end his training career on a high but I do fear the ground may have gone against him now.

4:50 Martin Pipe

Golden Taipan (Connor Brace)

He’s only ever ran once over this trip before when finishing third in a Novice Hurdle at Aintree which is obviously quite a tight track so whether he has the stamina around here only time will tell but he’s got some solid form and will bounce off the ground so hopefully he can run well at a price.

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