Paisley Park fends off staying hurdle challengers to further enhance Cheltenham legend
There are not many horses that can claim superstar status but Paisley Park, Emma Lavelle’s superb staying hurdler, is working towards it and will return to the Cheltenham Festival in March as the meeting’s star attraction after winning a second Galliardhomes.com Cleeve Hurdle.
The charismatic eight-year-old faced a stern challenge from a different bunch of pretenders to his staying-hurdle crown but dealt with them just as he always does; winning not by a huge margin but with his ears pricked and, metaphorically, twiddling his thumbs. He is certainly not a horse to give himself a hard race.
This time he beat Summerville Boy, winner of the Supreme Hurdle two years ago, by a length and a quarter. Lavelle and her husband, the former jockey Barry Fenton, know him so well they find watching him easier these days. For those who know him less intimately, there was a moment from the home bend to about five strides before the last when he looked in trouble as Summerville Boy and Lisnagar Oscar fought out the lead. But the champion was merely winding up.
He then hit top gear, jumped past the front-running Summerville Boy at the last and was always doing enough up the run-in. So far on his winning run, which now amounts to seven races, nothing has yet got to the bottom of him.
“He doesn’t hit the flat spot like he used to,” said Lavelle. “To a certain extent he’s dictated to by what’s going on around him, but I love those ears – as soon as they go forward. I think I love him. He’s getting better, he’s not slow, he’s a stayer with pace and I enjoyed that race much more than some of the others.
“We knew he was in good shape and that it would take a good one to beat him. I thought that was as a good a race as he has run from the point of view of being professional, how he travelled and jumped. When he gets to the front, he only does enough. “When I’m watching him walking round, I think that this is what racing does really well; a really good horse who keeps doing it – it carries more than just its own yard with it.”
Earlier, Lavelle’s Ladbrokes Trophy winner De Rasher Counter finished a distant fourth in the Paddy Power Cotswold Chase, not quite bridging the gap between handicapper and Gold Cup pretender – or not yet at least.
However, over 30 lengths ahead of him the winner of the race, Santini, put himself in the mix for jump racing’s blue riband when he beat Bristol de Mai by 3½ lengths.
Named after a restaurant next to owner-breeder Richard Kelvin-Hughes’s London office, the eight-year-old – runner-up in last year’s RSA after a bad preparation – is now 7-1 second favourite behind Al Boum Photo for his return to Cheltenham in March.
Anyway, it was a huge improvement on his only other start this season, an underwhelming win at Sandown in November. But if, as the connections of Bristol de Mai contended, their horse had run very nearly to his best then it may be a better trial than it will get credit for.
Certainly, Santini was doing his best work up the hill in the last couple of hundred yards. He will be aided by an extra furlong in March, a bit like Paisley Park, as he probably does not do much more than he needs and it looks an open year. Stamina is not the problem; it is just a case of whether something else gets the trip a bit quicker on the day.
“It’s open, there are a lot of protagonists but I think we’re one of them,” said trainer Nicky Henderson. “It’s a step forward, 200 per cent better than Sandown. Ours were a bit fat and sloppy then and he lives and thrives on work, the more you can get into him the better he is. You’ve got to fire work at him so there’s more to come.
“We had a dreadful run-in to the Festival with him last year so we need to get lucky with a good prep this time. Bristol de Mai is a good yardstick, some will say Cheltenham’s not his favourite place but it looked a good race. The better the ground the better Santini will be – he’s a beautiful mover.”
