Gift To Tackle Longer Assignment Connections of Iris´s Gift hope to find a suitable novice chase over three miles for the talented grey following his victory at Bangor. The eight-year-old, trained by Jonjo O´Neill, made all the running in the hands of Tony McCoy when following up his first win over fences at Market Rasen two weeks earlier. While those successes have come over two and a half and two and three-quarter miles, a step up in trip is on the cards for the 2004 Stayers´ Hurdle hero. 'It was a great day - we were delighted with his performance. He jumped well and he had to do all the donkey work. AP gave him a great ride and said he was blowing more than the horse,' said owner Robert Lester. 'We will probably stay on the same route and find another novice chase for him and take it from there. 'He doesn´t do a tap at home so we have to get him fit on the track. 'We are not going to take any risks with him if the going is not right. The ground was perfect yesterday. Ideally we´d be looking for a three-mile novice chase on soft ground in about two or three weeks´ time.'(C) PA Sport
