Pauling’s Court order after easy win

BEN PAULING believes Tellherthename is in the same league as his 2017 Cheltenham Festival winner Willoughby Court after the five-year-old bounced back to form to earn a shot at the Sky Bet Supreme Novices’ Hurdle.

Seventeen days after being pulled up in Boxing Day’s Grade One Formby Hurdle at Aintree, Tellherthename sauntered to a 14-length success in the Novices’ Hurdle, prompting Pauling to draw favourable comparisons with his Ballymore Novices’ Hurdle winner. Tellherthename’s victory was something positive for jockey Kielan Woods on the day he was handed a 45-day suspension for repeated breaches of the whip regulations. If Tellherthename runs before the Festival it will be in next month’s Betfair Hurdle at Newbury. Pauling said: ‘He is back on track. We turned a lot of stones to try to find out what had happened at Aintree, we found a few bits and bobs but nothing to put us out for that long. ‘I was keen to get his season back on track before we dwelt on it for too long. This is as good as I’ve had. He is a class horse with gears galore.’ Woods said: ‘I don’t know what happened at Aintree — maybe it was the horrendous ground or he had an off day.’

On the suspension which will prevent him riding in the Betfair Hurdle if Tellherthename goes there, Woods added: ‘It is a long time and I am gutted also because I have let Ben down. I am going to be on the sidelines for a while but I’ll be back.’ Woods, who was also hit with a 42-day suspension in June, has blamed his breaches of the whip rules on a ‘mental block’ and in a statement issued on his behalf by the Professional Jockeys Association, he said: ‘By the time I reach the end of this suspension I’ll have missed around a third of the last year through suspension and I’ve got no one to blame but myself.

‘I’m going spend this time off getting to the bottom of why I seem to have a mental block when it comes to this issue and making sure whatever the issue is, I get it fixed.’

The Boodles Hurdle is the Festival target of Kabral Du Mathan after he won the Weatherbys Chatteris Fen Juvenile Hurdle for Paul Nicholls and Harry Cobden.

There was no fairytale return to the training ranks for Henrietta Knight at Wincanton, where her first runners since 2012 — Zettabyte and Ballywalter — were ninth and pulled up in their respective races.