Silviniaco answered his critics emphatically at Haydock

‘I’m going for Al Ferof,’ said a suit in front of me in the Totepool queue at Ascot on Saturday before the Amlin steeplechase. ‘Don’t waste your money,’ said his companion, a man with the sort of face that made you feel he should have been somewhere else helping the police with their inquiries. ‘He hasn’t been the same horse since he won this race last year. Forget it.’ His companion listened, but if ever I have learnt a lesson in racing it is not to dismiss as a light of former days a horse that Paul Nicholls keeps sending to the racecourse. Remember a certain Kauto Star? He fell in the 2010 Cheltenham Gold Cup. In 2011 he was third in the January King George to Long Run, third at Cheltenham in March and pulled up in the Punchestown Gold Cup in May. But in November of that year Kauto Star came back to win his fourth Betfair Chase at Haydock, becoming the first horse to win a Grade One in seven consecutive seasons.