Kings Palace, arguably the most exciting long-distance novice chaser in training, will head to Newbury on Saturday for his final prep race before running in the RSA Chase at the Cheltenham Festival.
David Pipe has entered Kings Palace, favourite with Ladbrokes for the RSA in March at 4-1, in three races at the weekend but the trainer is favouring the Betfair Novice Chase at Newbury, where the frost covers went down last week in an attempt to ensure the meeting survives the current cold spell which is likely to result in no jumps racing until at least Thursday.
Pipe, writing of his plans on his website, said: “With the ground at Wetherby coming up very testing [last] Saturday we decided against taking exciting novice chaser Kings Palace there for the Towton Chase.
“While it was a winnable race, we did not want to give him a harder time than necessary on heavy ground at this stage. He will be entered in novice chases at [the televised meetings] at Newbury and Warwick on Saturday as well as in a graduation chase at Exeter on Sunday.
“The preferred option is the Newbury race, although the recent inclement weather with all the rain, snow and frost has made it extremely difficult to predict the ground [or even the chances of racing going ahead] and so we need to keep our options open for him for his final start before the Festival.”
Paul Nicholls is confident of a prominent run from Calipto, the ante-post favourite for the Betfair Hurdle on the Newbury card.
“I toyed with the idea of giving him a breathing op in the summer as he was a bit thick in his wind and finally had it done when he was beaten by Tiger Roll at Cheltenham in October. He actually ran all right that day but choked towards the end of the race and was off to the vets within 48 hours. I am delighted by the way Calipto has been working recently. He’s quite unexposed and I’m expecting a big run on Saturday,” he said on Monday.
Warwick have also put down the covers but there will be no jumps racing in Britain for the second day running on Tuesday after Market Rasen and Sedgefield both fell victim to the icy conditions.
Ludlow’s meeting on Wednesday is also under threat from the weather with an inspection called for 8am on Tuesday and officials “not optimistic”.
“We had quite a hard frost last night. It’s not creeping up much, going up to 2C during the day and dropping down to minus 2C, minus 3C at night,” said the clerk of the course, Simon Sherwood. “There doesn’t look as though there’s much change in the weather certainly up to Wednesday, the day of the races, hence we are going to take a view in the morning. At the moment we’re not optimistic.”
Carlisle have yet to announce an inspection for the same day but the track is currently frozen in places while Thursday’s jumps fixture at Doncaster could do with a significant improvement in the weather with the track in a similar shape.
“There is a possibility of some improvement in the forecast on Wednesday. It all hangs on what happens there - wintry showers that could possibly come as rain. That might give us a bit of help,” said the clerk of the course, Roderick Duncan. “We have no inspection planned yet. I will review that tomorrow and see what the forecast says. We would love to get the meeting on but it’s not looking very promising at the moment.”
An additional meeting will be staged at Wolverhampton on the all-weather on Thursday afternoon owing to the recent loss of several National Hunt fixtures.
