Happy Lee celebrates a golden Cheltenham win
HAPPY DIVA had all the breaks this time round when landing the £160,000 BetVictor Gold Cup at Cheltenham yesterday for trainer Kerry Lee and jockey Richard Patrick.
In an eventful race, in which only eight of the 17 starters finished, 14-1 shot Happy Diva — brought down four fences out when travelling well last year — led approaching the secondlast fence, where the hopes of 4-1 favourite Slate House ended.
That left Happy Diva in command but she was hanging on at the line, as
Barry Geraghty, on the JP McManus-owned Brelan D’As, closed the winning margin to a neck.
Lee, who took over the family stable in Herefordshire from her father, Richard, in 2015, won the 2016 Welsh National with Mountainous and the Grade One Ryanair Gold Cup at Fairyhouse with Kylemore Lough in the same season. But yesterday’s race, with a first prize of £90,000, was her most lucrative win.
Lee said: ‘With a circuit to go, I was thinking Richard had her perfectly positioned. I could not have been happier, but you never let yourself get carried away.
‘It’s magnificent for us because we have had a fairly quiet season and one or two have fallen by the wayside with their owners.’
For Patrick, 24, it was easily the biggest win of his career. ‘We had bad luck last year but this definitely makes up for it,’ he said.
The Philip Hobbs-trained Thyme Hill made it two from two over hurdles with an impressive three-length win over Champagne Well in the Ballymore Novices’ Hurdle.
He will likely head to the Challow Hurdle at Newbury over Christmas and Hobbs said ground conditions will decide whether Thyme Hill’s Festival target will be the two-and-a-half or three-mile novice hurdle. Dan Skelton’s Allmankind earmarked himself as the best juvenile hurdler seen out this season by making all in testing conditions in the JC Triumph Hurdle Trial.
At Punchestown, where Faugheen made an impressive chasing debut despite a bad mistake, there was a shock in the Morgiana Hurdle, when the Willie Mullins-trained 2-5 favourite Klassical Dream could only finish third to stablemate Saldier, who was running for the first time since fracturing his nose in a fall a year earlier.