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.
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