In the midst of the most embarrassing Cheltenham Festival on record for British jumps racing, Paul Nicholls left Prestbury Park after the four-day meeting without a single winner to his name. It was certainly a damning meeting for the hosts, losing the Prestbury Cup 23-5 to their cross-Irish Sea rivals would have been a bitter pill to swallow and downright unimaginable even a decade ago — yet it feels very little has been done to rectify it in the last 12 months, but that’s a discussion for a different day.
The thought of Nicholls’ contingent not picking up a winner at the Cheltenham Festival would have never crossed the minds of the punters checking the Betdaq horse racing betting markets prior to the meeting. After all, the 59-year-old has won the prestigious Leading Trainer award six times during his lucrative career as a handler and is still British racing’s leading man — having won the British Champion Trainer award 12 times since 2006, including last year.
2002. That was the last time Nicholls wasn’t granted access to the winner’s enclosure at Cheltenham Racecourse during the four-day Festival. He has saddled an impressive 43 winners at Prestbury Park since then, yet last year he fired a very rare blank and with the Irish expected to have another dominant meeting next month, it is feared that he could once again head back to his Manor Farm Stables in Dorset empty handed and with his tail between legs.
Worryingly, Nicholls’ yard has been struggling for form so far this season as well. Prior to the Super Saturday meeting at Newbury earlier this month, the British trainer had only landed two winners from his previous 40 runners — a strike rate that left a lot to be desired. Bravemansgame eased the pressure a bit with victory in the Novices’ Limited Handicap Chase on that card, while Red Risk won a Handicap Hurdle at Uttoxeter on the same day.
But Nicholls has since gone on another 17-race run without a win (correct at the time of writing), five of which were short-priced favourites, meaning it’s certainly a cause for concern ahead of Cheltenham — even if the trainer has played it down, claiming that his hay might be playing a key role in the bad form: "We're just guessing that's what it is. We're waiting for the tests to come back, but we are already covering our tracks.
"You wouldn't know there was a problem looking at them. When they are sick or have a cough you know where you are and you draw stumps, but this is like it was a few years ago. I think it's a short-term thing. You can overthink things and I think you can put a line through a few of them for one or two different reasons, but there's one or two that you can't.
"I think you've just got to be positive and crack on until you know otherwise."
Looking ahead to the Festival, it feels like Nicholls is already trying to cut his yard’s losses. Frodon and Clan Des Obeaux are bypassing the event for perhaps a crack at the Grand National Festival, where there will be less Irish-trained horses to compete with at Aintree. Bravemansgame is once again Manor Farm’s main hope, but it will be no easy feat for him to get the better of Galopin Des Champs in the Brown Advisory Novices’ Chase.
He does have a handful of other single-figure priced horses, like Threeunderfive, Stage Star, and Bob And Co, and with the Cheltenham Festival so unpredictable, anything can happen at Prestbury Park. On current form and without an out-and-out favourite though, we wouldn’t be surprised to see to see him leave empty handed again — unfortunately. It looks like Nicky Henderson will have to pick up the scraps for the British.
