Racing: Bradstock restarts King Harald's campaign

For a trainer with no more than 20 horses in his care, a winner at the Cheltenham Festival represents not just a foot in the door, but a length of shin and several fingertips too. After King Harald won the novices' handicap chase there last March, however, the door was slammed ruthlessly upon the most tender hopes of Mark Bradstock.

First, and most traumatically, King Harald was threatened with disqualification after a prohibited substance was traced in his post-race sample. After three months of purgatory, Bradstock's mystified protest of innocence was vindicated by counter-analysis, and the prize restored. The relief was immense. "We drank the pub dry a second time," Bradstock recalled this week. "I had never even heard of the drug. It was not a very pleasant experience, to say the least."

But his torments instead became more insidious. His stables near Wantage have not welcomed home a single winner since April. King Harald himself was fancied for the Hennessy Gold Cup in November, but he was already beaten when unseating his rider. The horse was found to have lost a shoe, and next day broke out in ringworm, but he had also endured a shattering race over nearly three and a half miles at Cheltenham just a fortnight previously. It seemed to some observers as though a small stable had failed the test presented by its first big horse. They did not hesitate to say so, either, and Bradstock was infuriated.

"I found it fairly extraordinary that people could be so unpleasant," he said. "They would never have had the balls to write the same things about a bigger name. These people don't know one end of a horse from the other. That race at Cheltenham wasn't just a prep race. It was worth 70 grand and we were very keen to win it, thanks very much.

"But there was nowhere else to run him anyway. There were abandonments, or the ground was wrong, and race planning is a nightmare when you have a horse rated over 125 - though obviously that's a nice problem to have."

That case for the defence does remain open to one reproach, in that King Harald could easily have been found a race over hurdles. The same expedient was favoured at Warwick only yesterday by the trainers of Silver Birch and Clan Royal, both preparing for the John Smith's Grand National. "We never have considered that, because of the way he jumped early last season," Bradstock said. "His first couple of episodes over fences weren't great. He was a bit of a slow learner. In his first chase, it was as though he had never seen a fence in his life. But we have given the horse a serious amount of work in every sphere."

In his eighth year as a trainer, the former assistant to Fulke Walwyn is intimate with the fragility of his opportunities. King Harald all but slipped on the bend after just three fences at the Festival, and Matt Batchelor nearly came out of the saddle landing over the last. The jockey ended up kicking his other foot free to ride his finish, and it is a tribute to the horse's talent that he had already found fresh momentum by then.

"A friend was standing by the fence and said that he was probably going too well," Bradstock said. "He didn't hit the fence, he just buckled because he had so much momentum."

Bradstock has given King Harald an entry in the Totesport Cheltenham Gold Cup itself and is confident that he can start prising the door back open when he returns from his break tomorrow. He is 6-1 joint favourite with the sponsors for the Sky Bet Great Yorkshire Chase, a race exported to Nottinghamshire while bulldozers tackle Doncaster and the most valuable prize ever offered at Southwell.

"He has been working incredibly well," Bradstock said. "The horses have not been firing on all cylinders, but they seem to be coming back now."

There were also signs of life from both Clan Royal and Silver Birch, who finished third and fourth respectively off their low hurdle ratings at Warwick. On his first start since the 2004 Welsh National, Silver Birch led until leaving the back straight, while Clan Royal, settling better than in a similar race at Exeter last month, emerged from the rear and was not given a hard time to win their duel for third, the pair a dozen lengths adrift.

Clan Royal, still tanking along when carried out at Becher's last year, remains 7-1 favourite with Totesport for the National. Silver Birch (16-1) is likely to resume over fences at Wincanton on 18 February, four days after the National weights are published.

His trainer, Paul Nicholls, meanwhile expressed growing optimism for Royal Auclair in the Letheby & Christopher Cotswold Chase at Cheltenham tomorrow - on account of both the drying ground, and the absence of Monkerhostin, whose trainer has now resolved to keep him fresh for the Gold Cup.

Chris McGrath

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