Four Irish among Paddy Power 32 The Paul Nicholls-trained Mon Parrain is among 32 entries for Saturday's Grade 3 Paddy Power Gold Cup at Cheltenham. The ante-post favourite for the £150,000 contest was last seen chasing home Always Waining in the John Smith's Topham Chase at Aintree in the spring and is predicted to have a big season by the Ditcheat handler. "He worked great at Exeter a couple of days ago - I had been struggling to get him as fit as I would have liked, so that's why we took him there and he worked nicely," Nicholls told the Racing UK Podcast. "He's going to have to improve to win off a mark of 152. He's been a bit of a hype horse. He won so well when he was thrown in at the weights at Sandown and then he did run well at Aintree, although he has gone up a few pounds for getting beat. "I've not won the race before as generally mine are not well handicapped. It's going to be a hard race to win, but he doesn't know he's favourite." Among his main potential rivals are the progressive Wishfull Thinking, who signed off at Punchestown with victory under topweight, and Paul Nolan's Noble Prince following his comeback win at Naas at the end of last month. Mon Parrain's stablemate Poquelin could carry top weight in the contest and will drop back in trip after finishing fifth behind Weid Al in the Charlie Hall at Wetherby. Norther Bay for Eoin Griffin, Finger Onthe Pulse for Tom Taaffe and Loosen My Load for Henry De Bromhead are the other Irish runners still in the mix.
