It was a satisfied Ben Pauling who returned to his base here after an early excursion to the Lambourn gallops with his Cheltenham contenders on Sunday. “Every horse worked better than I could have dreamt,” he said, adding in an aside to Cyrius Moriviere’s lass: “Your horse flew.”
She almost glowed in response to this favourable news. It could hardly be a more exciting time for a young stable, just 15 miles from the track on which all of jump racing will converge next week. In just his third season with a licence, the 32-year-old Pauling is a rising star of the winter game and the Festival represents a huge opportunity for him to make good on that reputation.
Of all the trainers in Britain and Ireland currently caring for a Festival favourite, he is the only one who has not yet tasted success there. “I never expected to be in a position to have a Cheltenham winner so soon,” he said, taking the only opportunity available in a busy day to settle into a sofa and reflect on his prospects. “If it actually came off, it would be career-changing because we’re getting plenty of interest as it is but that would just seal the deal for a lot of things. It would mean everything.”
Importantly, he offered a positive report about Barters Hill, the horse for whom he is known, being unbeaten in seven races and on offer at just 11-4 for the Albert Bartlett, the Grade One contest which immediately precedes the Gold Cup. “Over the last month, he’s just started to really sparkle again,” the trainer said.
“He’s very exciting. I’m delighted with how he is at home. He came out of Doncaster well, knew he’d had a bit of a race but was fine. Going to the Cheltenham Festival, having a genuine favourite with a good chance is amazing. I thank my lucky stars.”
Pauling was raised on a farm near here in the Cotswolds and rode in local point-to-points as a teenager before moving to Lambourn, an hour to the south-east, to learn his craft as assistant to Nicky Henderson. That’s why, when he needs an “away day” to put an edge on his best animals, he boxes them up at dawn and heads back down the A40. “It’s a place I know, I was there six years.”
The jockeys and workriders he uses are also familiar with Lambourn. Between them, they can judge a horse’s degree of fitness quite readily by seeing how he copes with the Back of the Hill gallop. “We just know it inside out.”
Back in November, one such away day sparked an almighty gamble on a Cheltenham handicap, when Pauling was given permission by his old guv’nor to bring over a promising animal to work with the Henderson string. “I wasn’t going to do it with something I wasn’t confident in, because you wouldn’t want to lose face in front of your old boss and other colleagues,” he recalled.
The horse was A Hare Breath, previously with another trainer and unraced for almost two years. Pauling told Henderson he thought the horse useful but wanted to know more. “This’ll sort you out,” the older man replied.
“He worked it with the front pair, two bloody nice horses and he worked just as well, if not better than them. And everyone looked around and said: ‘Oh my God.’ Everyone wanted to know what it was called.” Backed from 25-1 down to 6-1 on his first run for Pauling, A Hare Breath won handily, significantly raising his trainer’s stock thereby.
Next week, A Hare Breath will take his chance in the County Hurdle, along with Cyrius Moriviere. Local Show will tackle the four-mile National Hunt Chase under Pauling’s head lad, Tom David. Silvergrove, seeking his third win on the spin, could go in the Ultima Handicap Chase or the Kim Muir.
Perhaps most impressive of all is the restrained preparation Pauling has given his Grand Annual candidate, Raven’s Tower, unseen in public for four months. “He’s very good fresh, he jumps brilliantly, the faster they go, the better. He just could be weaving his way through after two-out. I expect him to be jumping the last somewhere in contention.”
But Barters Hill will carry most of his hopes, even though he will face a strong challenge from the Willie Mullins yard. “I don’t really worry about what the opposition is because, completely honestly, at the moment he doesn’t look like he knows how to get beaten. He wants to win and, going to Cheltenham, that is a huge advantage, to have a horse that just doesn’t like getting beaten, with a huge engine as well. We’ll see.”
