Paul Nicholls started the day here with a very uncharacteristic strike rate of 12% in December but on the evidence of the Mitie Novice Chase there is not a great deal wrong with the champion trainer’s luck. Le Mercurey, his runner in the Grade Two event, was three lengths behind Amore Alato, a 40-1 outsider, on the run to the final fence and making little impression. Two seconds later Amore Alato was riderless and Nicholls and his stable jockey, Sam Twiston-Davies, had yet another Graded winner on the board.
It was a fortunate success but a useful boost for both trainer and rider before a much more significant day at Ascot, when their runners include Saphir Du Rheu, a leading contender for the Grade One Long Walk Hurdle. Twiston-Davies suggested earlier this week that he may remodel his riding style after being unseated twice last weekend by horses that jinked without warning. This was a reminder that when fortunes change in jumping, it often happens without warning, too.
Harry Skelton, the rider of Amore Alato, watched the closing stages from three different angles on the big screen as he trudged back down the course. The way Skelton smacked his whip against his leg after the third replay suggested he could still not quite accept what he was seeing. Amore Alato jumped every other fence in the race with a speed and accuracy that defied his starting price but at the last he did not take off at all, giving Skelton no chance to keep the partnership intact.
Nicholls was not at Ascot to see Le Mercurey’s success but Tom Jonason, his assistant, suggested that the winner may follow Ptit Zig, who took the same race for the stable last season, and run next in the Dipper Novice Chase at Cheltenham on New Year’s Day.
“Sam thought as they were coming to the last that with a good jump he still might pick him up,” Jonason said. “He was quite weak last year and it was quite difficult for him as a four-year-old who was bought as a chaser. He had a wind op in the summer, which helped him, and he had to step up again today. He has and I wouldn’t call him a fortunate winner. We’ve always thought that he needs a trip so he would have galloped all the way to the line.
“Paul said the Dipper was a possible target when I spoke to him just now and that seems like a logical progression.”
Festival quotes for Le Mercurey were thin on the ground afterwards and a more likely contender for a race at the season’s showpiece meeting in March is Yanworth, the winner of the Grade Two Supreme Trial Novice Hurdle, perhaps better known and remembered as the Kennel Gate.
Alan King’s five-year-old did no more to beat four rivals than his starting price of 1-3 would imply but he had the quality to finish fourth in the Festival Bumper in March and has added a quick, natural jumping style to his armoury this season. Yanworth has already beaten several subsequent winners and is the 14-1 (from 20-1) fourth-favourite for the Supreme Novice Hurdle on 15 March.
Several bookmakers also quote Yanworth for the Neptune Novice Hurdle but he seems likely to stay at two miles.
“I don’t see any reason to go any further,” King said. “He’ll have a break and we’ll look for something in February but off the top of my head I can’t think of anything at the moment. Everything he’s bumping into seems to come out and win.”
Le Mercurey and Yanworth were the only winners on the card at single-figure odds as the four remaining contests went to runners at 33-1, 20-1 and 16-1 twice. The last of those, in the concluding Listed bumper, was Coeur Blimey, who beat contenders from several major yards to win for the mother-and-daughter team of Susan and Lucy Gardner.
Lucy Gardner, who was claiming 3lb, was up against Twiston-Davies on his father’s previously unbeaten Ballyandy in the closing stages but both Coeur Blimey and Gardner were good value for the one-length success.
“We have to have two horses to gallop with him at home,” the rider said afterwards. “One up one time and one up the second time because there’s nothing else that can live with him. It was a good race but I thought he deserved to take his chance even though he was an outsider.”
