Results Cheltenham Thu, 17th Mar, 2022

Bob Olinger claims fortunate Turners triumph

I was happy with him, he made one or two little errors, so there’s definitely room for improvement there, but four out I wasn’t delighted and I thought I’d be travelling better. I don’t know if it was the true Bob Olinger today, even coming up the hill it wasn’t the fashion of last year and I was never going to catch Paul. It’s strange emotions but unbelievable to get another winner here. I think he’s a Gold Cup horse, he’s one of the best in Henry’s yard so I wouldn’t be too disheartened today as I know that wasn’t the true Bob, for whatever reason I don’t know, but we’re lucky to have him. The ground might have blunted him but it’s just soft, jumping ground so I wouldn’t use that as an excuse as he’s won on heavy the last day. You never want to win in those circumstances,but this game — always expect the unexpected and we’re delighted to win and we need to show a bit of joy as well. I was surprised to see him off the bridle so soon, obviously the other one is something else. I never thought I’d see another horse do that to him. He made a couple of mistakes so we still have to work on the jumping, but he jumped well on the first circuit. He’s still a work in progress, it was still only his third run over fences and he’s won a Grade Three and a Grade One. You don’t like to win a race like that, though.

Third Wind battles to Pertemps prize

On his day he’s a very good horse and when the rain came, he had the soft ground he likes. We said jump off positively and Tom took the brave route down the inner. He said it was easy, and he didn’t even have to hit him. I felt it was a needless inquiry because they hardly touched, and if we’d lost it I would have appealed. It was six of one and half a dozen of the other, and nothing happened. Tom said he was really relaxed and loved that ground. It was heavy at Haydock but he’d run a nice race at Warwick, so we came here hopeful of a good run.

Allaho dominates to deliver Ryanair double

Flooring Porter retains Stayers' Hurdle title

The plan was to make it, but of course he has the issues with the start. We wanted to make the running and he was foot perfect everywhere. Danny was fantastic on him, when he jumped the third last he eased off and let him fill up, but to be honest I was worried he might get done for a turn of foot. Danny was cool though and knew what he was doing. I wasn’t too bad when he was down at the start as I was pretty confident he was going to be OK today, he seems to have matured and he’s behaved himself all the time he’s been here. At Leopardstown (at Christmas) Klassical Dream got a flyer and we didn’t and it made the difference, he was beaten just over two lengths. We didn’t want the same to happen in this race.