Ascot Gold Cup aim for Clever Cookie Peter Niven is looking forward to a crack at the Ascot Gold Cup with his pride and joy Clever Cookie. The evergreen eight-year-old provided the former National Hunt jockey with his biggest success as a trainer to date in the Yorkshire Cup last week. Now, ground permitting, he will move on to the biggest staying prize of them all and while Niven admits there is no guarantee that he will stay two and a half miles, he doubts that any horse will travel through the first two miles as well as his stable star. "He's A1 and has been happy in his paddock," said Niven. "I'm not saying he's going to go and win the Gold Cup, but what I will say is that there won't be a horse that will travel through the two miles like him. "Whether he then goes and stays the last half-mile, we don't know. I can see where people are coming from about the trip because he does have a lot of pace. "What he loves, like a lot of horses, is running through beaten horses and he keeps picking up the more he does it, that's why he has to be held up. "He ran a cracker over two miles on Champions Day and he does have a fair turn of foot - Second Step (third in Yorkshire Cup) is not a bad horse, is he? "They can say what they want about it being a weak Group Two, but no one can take it off us."
