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Dettori grabs big race glory
FRANKIE DETTORI set out to breed a Classic winner, but landing the big Cheltenham race yesterday was a good second best.
The three-time champion Flat jockey, resplendent in brown trilby at the home of jump racing, sold Dodging Bullets for 8,000 guineas as a yearling and yesterday the Paul Nicholls-trained 9-2 shot landed the Betway Queen Mother Champion Chase.
Dettori said: ‘I got really excited. It was like watching my beloved Arsenal. He was bred to win The Derby but this is second best. It’s the equivalent of the 100m final at the Olympics and what a horse.’
THIS meeting is fast turning into a gala performance by the double act of Irish champion trainer Willie Mullins and his British counterpart Paul Nicholls.
Having seen Mullins, ably assisted by stable jockeys Ruby Walsh and Paul Townend, smash the home team on Tuesday with four winners headed by his Champion Hurdler Faugheen, it was Nicholls’ turn yesterday.
He won the feature £ 350,000 Betway Queen Mother Champion Chase with Dodging Bullets as well as the Coral Cup with Aux Ptits Soins, both ridden by stable jockey Sam Twiston-Davies, and the Fred Winter Juvenile Handicap Hurdle with Qualando, the mount of Nick Scholfield.
With Mullins also landing the RSA Chase with Bryan Cooper-ridden Don Poli, the two dominant stables in jump racing have now won eight of the 14 Festival races run so far. Nicholls denied he had driven home on Tuesday depressed or frustrated having drawn a blank in the face of the Mullins’ mullering.
But the mood for the journey home last night must have been some contrast.
Almost amazingly, Dodging Bullets’ one-and-a-quarter length defeat of 33-1 shot Somersby was the first steeplechase Nicholls had won at this meeting since Kauto Star landed the 2009 Gold Cup.
Back in third was Irish-trained front-runner Special Tiara but the big two — 2013 winner Sprinter Sacre and last year’s champion Sure De Grugy — blew out.
Trainer Gary Moore and jockey son Jamie felt the ground had dried out too much for fourth-placed Sire De Grugy, who has endured an injury-plagued season while Sprinter Sacre, a spent force by the home turn, was pulled up before the last by his jockey Barry Geraghty.
His trainer Nicky Henderson said thereh was no evidenceid S Sprinteri t Sacre’s old fibrillating heart problem had affected his gelding and a scope examination showed no signs of a significant blood vessel break.
However, the feeling was an old breathing issue might have re-surfaced. There will be no snap deci- sionsi b butt th there must be a chanceh he has run his last race.
Henderson said: ‘It is disappointing for everybody who has worked their socks off to get him back.’
The outcome once again showed how hard it is to come back and the result had echoes of the 2010 Gold Cup won by Imperial Commander when the focus was on the Nichollstrained pair of Kauto Star and Denman.
This time it was the turn of 9-2 shot Dodging Bullets, winner of this season’s Tingle Creek and Clarence House Chases, to be cold- shouldered in the build-up as the spotlight fell on the big two.
And there to cheer him home was his breeder, three-time champion Flat jockey Frankie Dettori, looking like he should be part of Elliot Ness’s crew in his brown trilby and mac. He hoped he was breeding a future Derby winner when he sent the mare Nova Cyngi to the stallion Dubawi. He ended up producing the victor of one the season’s biggest jumps races.
Dettori said: ‘I am only a small part in this amazing story but I am so pleased for Paul and the owners. I can say I have bred the best jumps horse of 2015.’
The result was no surprise to Nicholls, who said: ‘He was the form horse. He beat Sprinter Sacre at Ascot and I couldn’t see how he could turn that around. With all due respect to Gary Moore, I also thought Sire De Grugy had it all to do. He has had a problem.
‘I can see the sentiment side of it but the progressive horse normally comes out on top. I was fairly confident I had them covered, Champagne Fever was the one I was getting worried about and he was a non-runner.’
Nicholls puts Dodging Bullets’ improvement this year down to greater maturity and solving a gastric ulcer problem, as he has with tomorrow’s Gold Cup favourite Silviniaco Conti.
This success can only serve to strengthen both stable and punter confidence in his chance.
Nicholls added: ‘We felt he was losing his way but couldn’t work