Bookies slash Cheltenham Festival odds for Royale Pagaille as owner Rich Ricci weighs up potential Gold Cup run
THE world is Royale Pagaille’s oyster after his jaw-dropping win in the Peter Marsh at Haydock on Saturday.
The exciting seven-year-old barely came out of second gear when winning the big Grade 2 contest.
That was his third win on the spin, following similarly impressive wins at Haydock and Kempton earlier in the winter.
And all options are open going into the spring, with the bookies slashing him for several races at the Cheltenham Festival.
Ladbrokes cut him into 14-1 from 50s for the Gold Cup, while he is also 8s (from 16s) for the RSA Chase and 4s (from 10s) for the National Hunt Chase.
And Joe Chambers, racing manager to owner Rich Ricci, said all options are open – but they would be keen to avoid a clash with the Ricci-owned Monkfish.
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Chambers said: “There’s no bad news to report.
“I think it would have been great if the two Sams (Sam’s Adventure and Sam Brown) had been able to complete the course and turn up as we’d have learned an awful lot more than we actually have.
“We put him in the Gold Cup opportunistically at the time because it was closing when the travel ban was coming in and we just thought for the sake of the initial entry fee we could always take him out at the next forfeit stage on February 9 if his next run didn’t go according to plan.
“But I guess we’ll be leaving him in it, and we’ll be leaving him in the novice races as well.
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“We’ll see what the handicapper says on Tuesday as to what the substance of the form is. We thought we got fairly hammered after Kempton as he went up not once but twice.”
He continued: “All being well should Monkfish turn up are we likely to run two in that race (RSA Chase)?
“Probably not – it’s not really our MO to run two in the same race.
“There are eight weeks to go and a lot of water to go under the bridge. We’ll see what the ground is like closer to the time and take it from there.
“As a handicapper he’ll be pushing into the 160s and that’s puts him bang in the frame of the seasoned three-mile chasers, I think.”
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