Monbeg Dude eyeing Gold Cup after Coral Welsh National success
Connections of Monbeg Dude now have bigger prize to target, as the Coral Welsh National hero enters Betfred Cheltenham Gold Cup. Trained by Michael Scudamore, the 8-year-old has already proved his mettle at Cheltenham, by winning the Grade 3 Henrietta Knight
Handicap Chase in November last year.
The dashing runner saw his rating go up by another 10lb, and he is on an official mark of 138. He had already gone up by 7lb for his previous Cheltenham success. He has got the entry for the Gold Cup, but the handler is not reluctant to admit that plenty
of improvement is required to earn a place in the field.
It all depends on how he performs in next month’s Haydock Grand National Trial. Scudamore said: "It's probably very, very speculative and he'll have to go to Haydock next month and be very impressive there. We're probably getting carried away and dreaming
but if he was very impressive at Haydock and it came up very soft at Cheltenham we'd be disappointed that we didn't spend £600 to put him in.”
A total of 40 horses have entered the Cheltenham battle. A few days of good sunshine has infused some life in Cheltenham’s surface, but it is still hard to make any predictions about the conditions, because the weather might become inhospitable again in
the next few weeks.
Clerk of the course Simon Claisse said on Wednesday: “Up until New Year’s Day we averaged an inch a week for nine months and had the best part of three inches in the ten days before we called it off. It took five days to dry out to a stage where it was raceable.
Bred by Hilary O'Connor, Monbeg Dude made a terrible start to this season in October, when unseating his rider at Cheltenham. He quickly got his act together, and won a couple of graded events afterwards. His latest act at Chepstow was mighty impressive.
By crushing the 11-4 favourite, Teaforthree, by half a length, he gathered plenty of praise. He managed to bag the first prize worth £51,255.00, despite making a series of mistakes - something the handler would like to avoid next time out.
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