Kauto Star wins Champion Chase at Down Royal
It may not have been breath-taking but Kauto Star put his crashing fall in last season’s Cheltenham Gold Cup behind him with a win at Down Royal.
The Grade One JNwine.com Champion Chase may be the highlight of the course’s year but it was simply the starting point for Paul Nicholls as he looks to bring Kauto Star to a peak for when he attempts a fifth victory in the King George VI Chase at Kempton Park on Boxing Day.
Kauto Star was going into a race with plenty in hand on his six rivals in terms of the official ratings but both China Rock and Sizing Europe had the edge in terms of race fitness. And it was these two who were trying to challenge from three out.
But once Ruby Walsh asked Kauto Star to knuckle down, the response, while far from his imperious best, was more than enough to bring him clear for his 21st victory over jumps, beating Sizing Europe by four lengths. “That was what we wanted,” Nicholls said. “He had a real good blow, which is what we wanted, and we can go on from there. I’ve left loads of improvement in him obviously because we’ve got targets further down the road.”
There was always the worry that the heavy fall that Kauto Star took at the fourth-last in the Gold Cup in March might have brought the horse to a dead-end. “You never know, when a horse has a fall like he had, if they lose their confidence. But we did a lot of work on him in the spring and Ruby rode him in the week.
“The confidence was back and his stamina won the day.”
Nicholls said that there will be no immediate decision about whether Kauto Star will run in the Hennessy Gold Cup at Newbury before the King George, but he seems certain to be looking for a new jockey. Having won the next race for Nicholls, the Grade Two Ladbrokes.com Chase on The Nightingale, Walsh was taken to hospital with a suspected broken right leg after a fall from Corrick Bridge in the sixth race.
The one certainty about the Grade Two totescoop6 Elite Hurdle was that there was not going to be a problem with pace. In fact there were so many frontrunners that Barizan could not even get to the lead as Australia Day, Black Jack Blues Australia and Ultimate set a gallop that had the rest playing catch-up.
But ultimately, it was a tempo that was always going to catch up with the leaders as did Philip Hobbs’s Nearby. He took the lead jumping the second-last flight and, despite making a blunder at the last, pulled clear for 7lb claimer Chris Davies to complete a hat-trick after wins at Bangor and Aintree.
Hobbs, who had saddled 12 winners in the last 14 days made it 13 when Wishful Thinking won the Grade Two Totetentofollow Rising Stars Novices' Chase but hopes of a big-race treble dropped away as Triggerman became tailed off in the Badger Ales Trophy, which was won by the Paul Nicholls-trained Meanus Dandy.
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