Certain sections of the media love to run a knocking story and when champion trainer Paul Nicholls’s horses failed to win as many races as usual over the past three weeks, the groaners were soon at it. Was the magic missing? Had the maestro mislaid his baton? The Nicholls response was characteristically bold. He sent out his star young chaser Bravemansgame, his best hope for the Cheltenham Festival, to contest a novice handicap at Newbury last Saturday in which he had to give lumps of weight to a couple of handy performers in the shape of Grumpy Charley and Pats Fancy.
Bravemansgame was the highest-rated horse to run in a novice handicap chase since 1988 but with some fine leaps along the way he turned out to have no trouble giving 16lb to each of those rivals and remaining unbeaten in four races over fences. As one racing sage said to me in the winners’ enclosure: ‘Any other trainer with a fortnight of inexplicable under-performers would have been closing down the yard for a fortnight to scratch his head. Paul just carries on. That’s why he’s champion trainer.’
The man himself was confident after Bravemansgame’s victory that he had still left plenty to work on before Cheltenham: ‘When I had all those good horses like Kauto Star and Denman, I used to run them here needing it and that’s what I’ve tried to do in a handicap.’ Matter-of-factly he pointed out too: ‘I’ve been running at a 29 per cent strike rate all season and now I’m 23 per cent, but I’m still higher than most trainers and at some point over 12 months you’re going to dip.’ Point made.
By contrast one could only have sympathy for Nicky Henderson whose Gallyhill was the outsider of five.
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