Tizzard’s milk shake-up

FORMER dairy farmer Colin Tizzard chuckles about his recent decision to say goodbye to Buttercup, Daisy and many of the others that had made up his 350 milking cows. “Training horses was always the focus in the last 10 years,” he said. “I used to say the cows were a safety net but they were a lead weight holding us back. They had to be milked 720 times a year.

“Milking cows has got us to where we are. I bought the farm through dairy farming. I’ve had my son Joe with me more this year now the cows have gone but that’s probably a lead weight! But we work well as a team and it’s better to have two sets of eyes than one.” Tizzard also has a host of young pretenders seeking championship honours at the Festival. Chasing has always been the goal for him but he could break from convention by having a runner in the Champion Hurdle. “Vision Des Flos won the National Spirit Hurdle nicely at Fontwell,” he said. “He’s a lovely horse and if he’d not unseated his rider on his first chase start earlier this season, we’d have gone chasing for the rest of the year.

“I’m sure the Champion Hurdle will be run at a frantic pace and he travels well enough to run in those two-mile races, so we wouldn’t be afraid to go for the Champion Hurdle with him.”

Tizzard has two candidates for the Stayers’ Hurdle – West Approach and Kilbricken Storm.

“West Approach is a decent horse,” he said. “He’s plenty of pace for a three-miler and if we could cover him up a bit he’d have a good chance.

“Kilbricken Storm was very good with Elixir De Nutz, Master Debonair and Native River at Wincanton last week when they went for a racecourse gallop. He won the Albert Bartlett quite easily last year and I’ve been very happy with him.”

Also among Tizzard’s expected 25 runners will be Elixir De Nutz who will attempt to extend his winning sequence to four in the Supreme Novices’ Hurdle.

Lostintranslation, considered a future Gold Cup prospect, runs in the JLT Novices’ Chase, while Tizzard is also bubbling about the prospects of

Mister Malarky, a recent winner over fences at Ascot but he has yet to decide if it will be RSA

Chase or National Hunt Chase.