Results Cheltenham Wed, 16th Mar, 2022

Ballymore glory for favourite Sir Gerhard

L'Homme Presse claims Brown Advisory

I don’t think I’ve felt so sick during a race, which is rare, but I’m really looking forward to watching it again. I couldn’t be more thrilled. He’s such a spectacular jumper and even though he was favourite, it was lovely to hear the crowd cheer every time he put in a big leap. I think this race was always the most likely, but the only thing which would have changed our minds was if it was going to be heavy ground and even this rain has made it just soft ground. The horse was recommended to Andy (Edwards) after two runs in France, but then he picked up a tendon injury so he had to be very patient. He didn’t show a lot at home at first, it wasn’t until about three weeks before his first run for us that he showed us anything but he’s gone on and improved with every run.

Commander of Fleet wins Coral Cup

It’s great to train any winner here, especially for Gigginstown and it’s great for everyone in the yard. It might not have been one we were expecting but that is the game we are in, they are mostly running well. I often get to Thursday with no winner so we weren’t panicking. I’d say the ground made the difference to this lad, and he was handy throughout. A lot of my others just couldn’t handle the ground. The winner is obviously a good horse on his day. I don’t know much about the jockey, but he’s had a few winners for us and seems a nice fella. Every winner I train is important, whether it’s here, Tramore, Downpatrick, I’m in this game just to train winners.

Energumene triumphs in dramatic Champion Chase

We just thought we got the tactics completely wrong at Ascot so the plan today was to follow Shishkin. The problem Paul then had was you could see after two fences Shishkin wasn’t handling the ground so it then became a case of when was Paul going to forget about Shishkin and ride the race. Nico was wise in pulling Shishkin up, you could clearly see he hated the ground. I was very disappointed to see Chacun Pour Soi go out of the race when he did. I was gutted for Patrick (Mullins) because he appeared to be loving it. He might have given him a race. At every stage, though, Energumene seemed to be cantering and these extreme conditions suit him. He probably has more speed than we thought, at Ascot we felt after the race we should have waited rather than make all. That was the only plan I could come up with to turn the tables on Shishkin. It was a bit of an anti-climax for the neutrals but it was more nerve-wracking for me because you could see he was travelling the whole way.

Tiger Roll denied glorious swansong by stablemate

Facile Vega eases to Champion Bumper victory

Facile Vega was very good, he’s shown me at home that he’s always good. We were really worried about conditions here today, but he relished it. It was a tough decision by the stewards to do what they did and it was great that they did it quickly and they got the race run. That’s what I see every day, this horse just travels when we do work — now you’re seeing what I see. He’s a real sort. Gordon thinks a huge amount of American Mike and he just ranged up beside him and went forward when he wanted to.