If only everything in horse racing was as reliable as Paul Nicholls. The champion jumps trainer, seemingly cruising towards his ninth title, sent out Sound Investment to win the Greatwood Gold Cup here, stretching to 18 his run of Saturdays with at least one winner. That streak began on 1 November, right at the start of the core jumps season, and has lasted through four entire months.
“To be honest with you, it’s astounded me the improvement in him this year,” Nicholls said of Sound Investment, adding that this was not the only horse from his Somerset yard to have done unexpectedly well this winter. “He looked ordinary last year.”
In truth, this Saturdayfalls into racing’s calm before the storm category and the attention of those present slid easily towards more exciting things on the immediate horizon.
Nicholls said he had “four or five” horses in mind for next weekend’s feature race, Sandown’s Imperial Cup, naming Calipto, Sirabad and Qualando as ones he was considering. “Even after Cheltenham there’s some brilliant Saturdays, like the Midlands National, Hawkes Point’s heading there and Kempton, there’s a big meeting on and we’ll be happy if we can keep winning on Saturdays until the Grand National’s on, that’d be ideal.”
But that reference to the Cheltenham Festival, which starts in just nine days’ time, was an indication of where Nicholls’ thoughts are tending and he said he would quite like to start doing well on Fridays in time for the Gold Cup at the end of that week, for which he has the favourite, Silviniaco Conti. The Festival has not been enormously fruitful for the trainer in the past couple of years but his team could hardly be going there in better form or with more reason for confidence.
“They all worked hard, they all schooled in the week,” he said of the 30 or so horses he plans to send to Cheltenham. “Everything’s done everything that they want to do, really. They had a hard week, last week, they’ve all grafted. Next week, I’ll just back off them a fraction. They’ll all school Thursday, all do a strong piece of work next Saturday but they’re all where we want them to be, basically. They look great, I’m happy with them.
“It’s all a matter of whether they’re good enough on the day. We’ve got to be positive and think we’ve got lots of chances but it doesn’t work out like that. They’re tough races to win but we’re happy with the way they are at the moment and horses like him are running out of their skins and above themselves.”
He added that the stable’s run of success was also positive for the man who joined as first jockey this season, Sam Twiston-Davies. “People can see why we took him on. It was a bit of a tough decision and I was getting a bit of stick to start with but he’s really done very, very well. No one can say it’s not a good move and a sound investment for the future!”
Neil Mulholland and Barry Geraghty, one of the more interesting trainer/jockey combinations to emerge this season, struck with an 8-1 shot earlier on the card and Mulholland revealed that he had booked the high-profile jockey for a couple of Festival runners. Geraghty will be on The Young Master in the RSA Chase and The Druids Nephew in the three-mile handicap chase on Cheltenham’s opening day.
Soll was cut to a general 25-1 for the Grand National on 11 April after winning a veterans’ chase and it appears the 10-year-old has been turned around since joining David Pipe at the start of this season. Pipe indicated he would now save the horse for Aintree in the hope Soll will make the cut at the bottom of the weights.
