If a six-and-a-half-length success in the first Grade One of the campaign – his first at the highest level – is as good as it gets for Royale Pagaille this season, the delight of his trainer and rider in the winner’s enclosure on Saturday made it plain that it will be more than enough.
Venetia Williams’s nine-year-old has been beaten in the last three runnings of the Cheltenham Gold Cup, and remains an outsider at around 25-1 to make it fourth time lucky. But he is the epitome of the big, old-fashioned staying chaser that has always been Williams’s stock in trade, and if the mud happens to be flying at the Festival next March, who knows?
Haydock, though, will always be Royale Pagaille’s happiest hunting ground, and having joined Bravemansgame, the 8-11 favourite for the Betfair Chase, as they turned for home, Charlie Deutsch took a lead which last season’s Gold Cup runner-up never seriously threatened to claw back. By the final fence, a fourth win from five career starts at Haydock was already secured.
“He jumped very well, and if you’d seen him school on Thursday, you wouldn’t have imagined that he would,” Williams said. “But that’s him at home. He’s not switched on, but when he gets to the races, he is.
“You’d have to say that’s a career-best. All horses have their days and their lesser days. Yes, if all the horses in the race today were at the top of their game, you’d put a different light on it, but they’re not necessarily, and equally the same applies to us on other days. Today, we were the best.”
So while the bare form of this result puts Royale Pagaille within striking distance of Galopin Des Champs, who beat Bravemansgame by just half a length more in the Gold Cup in March, it is unlikely to translate smoothly, if at all, to the Festival next year.
“Cheltenham is quite a unique course,” Williams said. “It’s up and down and round, and a course like this [Haydock], it’s dead flat and down one side and up the other and there shouldn’t be any hard luck stories, so you should have the best horse winning.
“I’m not saying that he’s gone into any Gold Cups as the best horse, but it’s a trappy course and it has to be, as it’s the test of the best.”
Three miles around Kempton is a different test too, and Bravemansgame remains the market leader for a repeat success in the King George VI Chase on Boxing Day, in which he finished 14 lengths in front of Royale Pagaille last season.
Paul Nicholls’ chaser is top-priced at 11-4, with Shishkin – who refused to race when odds-on for the 1965 Chase at Ascot on Saturday – next in on 5-1 alongside Allaho. Royale Pagaille, meanwhile, is a 10-1 shot, with his stable companion L’Homme Presse available at 8-1 to give Williams a second win in the Christmas showpiece, a quarter of a century after her success with Teeton Mill in 1998.
Sedgefield
12.15 Recoup 12.50 Onestepatatime
1.20 Harper Valley 1.50 Take Centre Stage
2.20 Coup De Gold 2.50 Zuckerberg
3.20 Vanilla Dancer
Southwell
12.40 Generous Day 1.10 Star Flyer (nap)
1.40 Ned Cash 2.10 Stratton Oakmont
2.40 Telepathique
3.10 Ring Of Beara
3.40 God’s Own Getaway (nb)
“He was not good enough on the day, it’s as simple as that,” Nicholls said of Bravemansgame. “He jumped well, travelled well, and Daryl [Jacob, his jockey] said he thought he was going to win four out, but he didn’t quite pick up. It’s a different test at Kempton and it probably suits him better there.”
Jacob took over from Harry Cobden, Nicholls’ stable jockey, aboard Bravemansgame after the trainer opted to send Cobden to Ascot, and the decision was handsomely rewarded with a 240-1 four-timer.
Pic D’Orhy, the second-favourite, had a straightforward task in the 1965 Chase after Shishkin, officially the highest-rated chaser in training in Britain, planted himself at the start, while Blueking D’Oroux outstayed Strong Leader in the Coral Hurdle, completing a Grade Two double for trainer and jockey.
Kempton: 12.20 Captain Marvellous, 12.50 Floating Line, 1.25 Harbour Lake, 2.00 Ballintubber Boy, 2.35 Kateira, 3.05 Thelasthighking (nb), 3.35 Oslo.
Ludlow: 12.35 Time Interval, 1.05 Little Pi, 1.40 Braganza Bay, 2.15 Fantomas, 2.50 You Say Nothing (nap), 3.20 Minniemum, 3.50 Chatty Chich.
Nicky Henderson, meanwhile, must now find an alternative prep race for Shishkin before the King George.
“I don’t know why he did that today,” Henderson said. “It’s one of those starts where you are going away from home [stables] and the odd horse will do it. My biggest concern would be the King George start would be exactly the same.
“I will have to look [at alternatives] and if there is an open handicap, I wouldn’t mind running him, but the programme doesn’t allow these horses to run very often.”
