Cheltenham Festival: Tea For Two can fill Kelly’s cup to brim at Sandown

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Not all roads lead to the Cheltenham Festival, not even for those with the requisite talent. Some big names are giving next month’s Cotswolds jamboree a miss for one reason or another, including Tea For Two, the star turn in this afternoon’s Scilly Isles Novices’ Chase at Sandown.

Tea For Two, who at Kempton on Boxing Day transported his partner Lizzie Kelly into seventh heaven and into the record books as the first woman to ride a Grade One jumps winner, has shown all his best form on right-handed courses – all seven victories have been going clockwise, while the only time he has ever been pulled up was on his one visit to left-handed Cheltenham last March.

Kempton and Sandown – and perhaps Punchestown in April – are his cup of tea, so to speak; indeed, Kelly believes that today’s venue, featuring the three railway fences, spaced close together in the back straight and ideally taken without breaking stride, is tailor-made for such a fast, accurate jumper.

This is, though, another Grade One and by definition a tough assignment. In particular, the exciting Bristol De Mai, the leading home hope in Cheltenham’s JLT Chase, will be no pushover.

Earlier, Peace And Co faces a make-or-break Champion Hurdle test in the Contenders Hurdle following his comeback flop at Cheltenham in December, when he was far too eager for his own good.

Only three oppose last season’s Triumph Hurdle winner, but one is customary trailblazer Rayvin Black and, in theory, that should help Peace And Co settle in a race his trainer, Nicky Henderson, used successfully as a stepping stone for his 2010 Champion Hurdle winner, Binocular.

Henderson believes no horse on earth could last home while pulling so hard and hopes that a change of bit will help matters. Whatever, there can be no excuses this time.

Leopardstown holds its own Cheltenham Festival trials day, staging four Grade One contests, and it will be an important afternoon for leading owners Gigginstown House Stud, who run no fewer than five in the featured Irish Gold Cup, including last year’s Cheltenham Gold Cup third Road To Riches, who is the clear form pick.

Alan King’s Yanworth threw down a gauntlet at Cheltenham last Saturday; Willie Mullins’ Bellshill, displaced then as favourite for the Neptune Novices’ Hurdle, now has his chance to respond in the Deloitte Novice Hurdle and should have too much for Gigginstown’s Tombstone. Whoever wins will command extreme respect; the last three winners of this race were Champagne Fever, Vautour and Nichols Canyon, all of whom turned out to be Mullins A-listers.

Arguably, the most intriguing Irish visitor to Prestbury Park next month will be Ivanovich Gorbatov. Aidan O’Brien, his trainer, was jumps champion in Ireland three times and he had the good sense, when switching codes in the mid-Nineties, to keep hold of the brilliant Istabraq, whom he sent over to win three Champion Hurdles.

Not that the master of Ballydoyle is claiming any credit for preparing Ivanovich Gorbatov, favourite for the Triumph Hurdle after beating Mullins’ filly Let’s Dance at Leopardstown over Christmas, with the pair reopposing in today’s Spring Hurdle; he’s happy to confess his son, jockey Joseph, has done the work, as he turns his attention to training.