Going - Good to Soft (Soft in places).
Jackpot Pool - £171,580.39 Not Won. Carried forward to Kempton on Saturday 14th March. Placepot Pool - £1,328,566.10 Dividend - £730.40 Winning Units - 1327.83. Quadpot Pool - £127,080.94 Dividend - £43.10 Winning Units - 2180.59.
Apolon De Charnie stuns Cheltenham crowd with 50-1 shock in Triumph Hurdle
He was fantastic. He’s not very big, but he just caught my eye. I don’t usually watch the juveniles at home, but he caught my eye and I got a dream run everywhere. I’m very proud of my father. I’ve never seen him doubt himself as much as he has this winter. You get a lot of advice from people about what you’re doing wrong, but he sticks to his guns and gets it right most of the time
Wilful by far the best in County Hurdle for Jonjo and A J O’Neill
It’s fantastic and these are the days you dream about, it’s magic. You hope they happen and you build yourself up to it, but when they do they are very special.
Dinoblue defends her Mares’ Chase crown with minimum of fuss
It was a competitive race and I think she got an excellent ride from Mark and what more can I say, I’m just very happy. One thing Mark said when he got off her was that her jumping today was magical. The last ditch she jumped so well and took her into the race and she was just competitive then. Mark didn’t want to go that far out but what could he do. She’s very uncomplicated, a lovely mare and she’s a good match with Mark. That looked her best performance without going through the form book. We’d been worried about the trip before but there didn’t seem to be any problem with anything this year — ground, trip but especially her jumping, that was extraordinary. If you had a horse jump like that every day of the week, it would make this game easy. I don’t know when she might go off to stud, the main difference between the Irish and French is that in France they’d go off to stud with her, but we treat these mares as racehorses and if they are good we tend to keep them. I’ll leave that up to the owner. There’s nice mares’ races for her left this season, so I’d imagine she’d stick to them.
Johnny’s Jury powers up the hill for Albert Bartlett victory
It’s fabulous, just wonderful. We never planned to be at the back, but it was a bit of a mess at the start once again. He’s travelled through the race and jumped great and there’s no better man than Gavin. We’ve gone through a lot of things over the last few years and it’s wonderful to have another Grade One winner and certainly at Cheltenham it’s amazing. He’s a very nice horse, he came from Nicky (Henderson) who highly recommended him and he’s done nothing but improve over the course of the last year. It was a massive step up from two miles one (furlong) to three miles, but he’s a half-brother to Appreciate It so we thought his stamina was not in question and thankfully it worked out. We’ve had some wonderful times, winning the Hennessy (Coral Gold Cup) with Datsalrightgino and Grade One winners at Aintree and other big races, but it’s tough. At this place it’s tough to win and it’s tough to run well. We came here with five bullets to fire and five really nice horses and haven’t got a look in, which makes results like this so special.
Gaelic Warrior unstoppable in Cheltenham Gold Cup
It was a great ride by Paul. I haven’t seen the race, but I’ve heard it was! It’s been a great week, incredible, great racing, great winners, a good race today. I’m pleased for the horse. We try to buy Gold Cup winners, but we’ve never managed it before today. We’ve reached the mountain, but I love the game, it’s kept me involved all these years, the passion of the people. They take me as they find me, I’m not the easiest man, I’m an American, I’m loud, obnoxious, this that and the other, but the people have been good to me and long may it last. I always like to watch the race through my binoculars rather than on the screen and I could tell by Paul’s body language how he was going, I knew he was going well. This guy has to be up there with every one of my other Gold Cup winners, just because of the manner of his victory. Rich has been such a supporter of Closutton from the very start so to do something like this for him is fantastic. When he put in that huge jump at the fourth-last and landed in front I wondered if he had landed in front too soon and I was hoping nothing would come from behind. But when I looked at Paul I could see how confident he was. Paul has nerves of steel and to be on so much horse over the last three, he just sat there waiting.
