North Yorkshire hopes for Cheltenham Festival success (From York Press)

North Yorkshire hopes for Cheltenham Festival success

10:26am Friday 12th March 2010 in Turf Talk By Steve Carroll, Sports reporter

TURF TALK takes a peek at some of North Yorkshire’s leading representatives at the Cheltenham Festival.

FANS of the four-day Cheltenham Festival crown it “The Greatest Show On Turf” and Ferdy Murphy is hoping Kalahari King will prove to be North Yorkshire’s headline act.

The four days of March madness at Prestbury Park starts on Tuesday and West Witton-based trainer Murphy has a leading light with the former Arkle runner-up.

Kalahari King goes toe-to-toe with Master Minded and Twist Magic in the Seasons Holidays Queen Mother Champion Chase and, having honed a team of 12 on the beach at Redcar, Murphy is confident of adding to a haul of eight Festival winners.

“He is in very good form,” Murphy said of the nine-year-old, who is making his third trip to Cheltenham and returned to action with a thrilling winning display at Doncaster at the end of January.

While he will need a career-best showing to displace the twice defending champion, and 4-5 favourite Master Minded, he could be a good each-way bet at 5-1.

The well-supported The Hollinwell will represent Murphy in the Jewson Novices’ Handicap Chase, Galant Nuit is in line for the Fulke Walwyn Kim Muir Challenge Cup and Elzahann may also appear in the Pertemps Final.

Aintree may be Character Building’s ultimate target, but Norton handler John Quinn reckons the drying ground at Cheltenham could work in the ten-year-old’s favour.

Quinn’s Grand National hope announced his arrival on the big stage with a superb performance to win the Kim Muir at the Festival last year but has only been seen once since – over hurdles at Doncaster.

Character Building will run in the William Hill Trophy on the opening day of the Festival and, although Quinn recognises a Cheltenham repeat victory may need a little luck, he’s not totally discounting the possibility.

“He’s grand at the moment, he’s in great nick,” he said. “It might be stretching it a bit to think he can win there two years in a row but you never know.

“The ground drying out is right up his street, he’ll absolutely love it. Dougie Costello will ride him, as he does all mine unless the owners say otherwise.”

Brian Ellison, meanwhile, is hoping Bothy can land him that elusive Cheltenham winner.

The Norton handler saddles his promising four-year-old in the Fred Winter Novices’ Handicap Hurdle and is the in-form trainer’s big hope in Gloucestershire.

Profiled in Turf Talk a few weeks ago, Bothy has since taken an impressive victory at Taunton to make it three wins from three runs over hurdles.

He’s a general 12-1 chance with the bookmakers and for Ellison, who has twice almost tasted victory at the Festival with Latalomme, who came to grief at the second last fence in both 2002 and 2003, it could be third time lucky.

“He’s a competitive horse. All he wants to do is please you,” said Ellison. “He came out of it well (at Taunton); you wouldn’t know he’d been away. He’s in great form at home.”

Form is something that’s largely deserted fellow Norton handler Malcolm Jefferson this season. Coming off a best-ever 2009, which yielded 30 winners, the bad weather and a few coughs have restricted his runners to just 11 successes this time.

But hope springs eternal at Cheltenham and Jefferson will run Cape Tribulation in the Ladbrokes World Hurdle and Calatagan in the Johnny Henderson Grand Annual Chase.

“The World Hurdle is a tough ask,” he said. “But Cape Tribulation is working better than he’s ever done and he’s a decent horse. I just hope we get a drop of rain – he’s a better horse on softer ground.

“Calatagan seems in good form and although there are no easy races at the Festival, the Grand Annual is probably one of the slightly less competitive races.”