Galopin’s Gold run one of the best for Nicholls

CHAMPION trainer Paul Nicholls reckons the Boodles Gold Cup won by Galopin Des Champs on Friday was ‘one of the best you’ll ever see’.

Nicholls saddled runner-up Bravemansgame, ridden by Harry Cobden, but said he could not be disappointed in losing out to the brilliant winner trained by Willie Mullins, which was his third victory in the last five runnings of the race after fellow Irish trainer Henry De Bromhead saddled the previous two winners.

‘It was an end-to-end gallop from the start and two serious horses came to the fore,’ said Nicholls (right). ‘The best staying chaser in Britain jumped the last fence alongside the best staying chaser in Ireland together.

‘No excuses. We just came up against a very good horse. That was one of the best Gold Cups you will ever see.’

If Galopin Des Champs races again this season, it will be at the Punchestown Festival at the end of next month. Bravemansgame is likely to be given time to get over his exertions, missing next month’s Grand National meeting at Aintree.

‘He had a hard race and I don’t want to ruin what we have done,’ added Nicholls.

The Ditcheat trainer thinks he is starting to reap the rewards of investing in young horses to take on the dominant Irish stables.

‘The Irish trainers can buy every top lot at every sale,’ he said. ‘I had two owners with £400,000 to spend at Thursday’s sale at Cheltenham and bid £410,000 on two horses and didn’t get either of them. They went to Gordon Elliott.

‘That is what makes it so hard. No one can say we are not trying.’ lREX DINGLE bounced back from his near-miss aboard Dashel Drasher in Thursday’s Paddy Power Stayers’ Hurdle at the Cheltenham Festival by steering Major Dundee to victory in the Midlands Grand National.

The 12/1 shot, trained by Alan King and sporting the colours of the late Trevor Hemmings, pulled clear of his nearest rival after the final fence to win by three lengths.

It is a pleasing end to a week in which Dingle almost rode a 40/1 chance to victory in one of the Festival’s showpiece races, before eventually being demoted to third.