Clan Des Obeaux delivers away win for Ferguson at Punchestown Gold Cup
Clan Des Obeaux, part-owned by Sir Alex Ferguson, recorded the first victory for a British-trained jumps horse in Ireland for nearly two years when he made all the running under Sam Twiston-Davies to beat Al Boum Photo, the Cheltenham Gold Cup winner in 2019 and 2020, by a length and a half in the Punchestown Gold Cup on Wednesday evening.
British stables had drawn a blank from 38 runners in Ireland since 4 May 2019. It was a third win in the race for Paul Nicholls, Clan Des Obeaux’s trainer, and the first for a runner from Britain since 2010.
Twiston-Davies won a hunter-chase on Baby Run at the Punchestown Festival as an amateur in 2009 and the ride on Wednesday was only his third at the track since. “I came here as a kid to ride Baby Run and was very aggressive everywhere and kind of thought, I could have a good career out of this,” Twiston-Davies said.
“Halfway round, I was thinking, this is almost Baby Run-esque. You don’t believe you’re going to keep going. But Paul assured me that he was fit and he’d keep going.”
At Ascot on Wednesday, Stradivarius eased to his first success in four outings in the Group Three Sagaro Stakes and is now likely to head straight to the Gold Cup at Royal Ascot and an attempt to equal Yeats’s record of four successive wins in the meeting’s showpiece event.
“He’s been in great form at home and he has the same enthusiasm he has always had,” Frankie Dettori, the winner’s jockey, said. “He has got a turn of foot and when I asked him to quicken, he got there too soon. He is an incredible horse.” Stradivarius shortened to a top price of 15-8 for the Gold Cup on 17 June, having been available at 5-2 before on Wednesday.