THIS TIME HE’LL BE... RIGHT ON CUE
Tizzard’s favourite set for shot at redemption
HOME hopes in today’s Timico Cheltenham Gold Cup are carried by former dairy farmer Colin Tizzard, who must face down a St Patrick’s Day invasion of Irishmen buoyed by a 6-1 thumping of their hosts yesterday.
The Dorset trainer must hold the line without his biggest weapon, brilliant King George VI Chase winner Thistlecrack, who is injured.
But he still has two bullets — Cue Card and Native River — to fire at a race he has been obsessed about winning since first watching it as an 18-year-old standing on top of a Red Cross hut by the final fence.
Tizzard, now 61, said: ‘Every horse we buy, we are looking for a pedigree to win the Gold Cup. The Grand National would be nice, but the Gold Cup is No 1.’
He says he does not mind which of his pair triumph in the race. But while Native River, the Hennessy Gold Cup and Welsh National winner, has risen through the ranks rapidly since finishing second in the four-mile National Hunt Chase, Cue Card has been part of Tizzard’s life for seven years, with five Festival runs and two Festival wins.
Even for a phlegmatic man of the soil, the heart strings are surely pulled by Cue Card, who has unfinished business with the Gold Cup after crashing out at the third-last fence when going well under Paddy Brennan last year.
Brennan blamed himself for putting Cue Card in a tight gap between the eventual winner Don Cossack and Willie Mullins-trained Djakadam, who he faces again this afternoon. Tizzard said: ‘I’m sure if Paddy had his time again, he wouldn’t have been where he was at that time.
‘But four fences before, Cue Card was not going anywhere. Then a gap opened and the horse took off. None of us thought Cue Card would fall; he’s always been a neat jumper. He’s a cat, really. At the time I was just glad he got up. It was a horrible fall.
‘We had it in our mind, with him being a 10-year-old, that it was our last chance and he wouldn’t be as good this year. But he is as good as he’s ever been. When my son Joe rode him here in the 2010 Champion Bumper, I’ve never experienced that type of emotion before or since.
‘Richard Johnson thinks Native River has the full range of gears. He’ll need them. Cue Card is still a really good Grade One horse. I don’t think he is wilting at all yet.’
Tizzard has some decent home allies. Such is Jonjo O’Neill’s record with staying chasers that it would be foolish to write off More Of That or Minella Rocco, who beat Native River in last year’s National Hunt Chase. The latter is ridden by Noel Fehily, who has been on board the winners of the Champion Hurdle and Champion Chase this week.
The Irish have four of the 14 runners but all look to have a chance. Now the tide has turned, this could be Mullins’ chance to finally win one of the few races that eludes him. He has finished second six times.
Mullins is confident Djakadam arrives in better shape than last year. He is also relaxed about Djakadam’s defeat by Gordon Elliott’s Outlander in the Lexus Chase at Leopardstown over Christmas.
But Ireland’s best prospect might be seven-year-old Sizing John. He has spent most of his career banging his head against a wall taking on Douvan over two miles. On his first try at three miles, he won the Irish Gold Cup in February. His profile and record is very similar to 2005 Gold Cup winner Kicking King.
In a race in which Lizzie Kelly becomes the first female jockey to take a mount for 33 years, Sizing John’s trainer Jessica Harrington can join Jenny Pitman and Henrietta Knight as the female trainer of a Gold Cup hero.