Sackville flop a mystery

Sackville`s poor run in the Hennessy Cognac Gold Cup at Leopardstown yesterday continues to baffle connections.

Nothing has yet come to light to explain why the one-time ante-post favourite for the Tote Cheltenham Gold Cup finished tailed off behind Alexander Banquet.

'He seems fine. We`re checking him out to make sure there`s nothing wrong with him. At the moment we can`t find anything wrong,' said a mystified Piltown trainer Frances Crowley today.

'We were disappointed with the run yesterday and we`ll check him totally.

'He ate up pretty well and he`s sound. The ground was terrible but you would have expected a better showing.

'Maybe he just hated the ground and the way he jumped the last looked terrible. David (Casey) was trying to get him home as quietly as possible but he didn`t have enough momentum going into the fence.

'We were disappointed with him but as long as he`s okay we`ll keep going.'

Miss Crowley still has hopes of running the nine-year-old at Cheltenham next month.

'If he`s healthy and there`s nothing wrong we`ll just have to keep going, I guess,' she said.

Yesterday`s performance was too bad to be true from last season`s champion Irish novice chaser, who ended the campaign with eight successive wins.

But Crowley is thinking that perhaps expectations may have been too great.

'He`s had a couple of off days recently which is worrying.

'Maybe he`s just not as good as we all thought he was. But if he is okay we have nothing to lose by running him in the Gold Cup,' she said, adding that he would not run in the interim.

Sackville was pushed out to 20-1 from 10-1 with William Hill for the Gold Cup following his poor Hennessy run, yet he was favourite less than a month ago.