Victoria Pendleton defies her criticswith first win to boost Cheltenham Festival bid

Cheltenham here she comes. Probably anyway. Victoria Pendleton, unceremoniously dumped from Pacha Du Polder in front of the Fakenham stands 13 days ago, steered her prospective Prestbury Park mount to a straightforward, wide-margin victory at windy Wincanton yesterday.

Amid all the hullabaloo inevitably surrounding the double Olympic cycling gold medallist’s quest to ride in the Foxhunter Chase a fortnight tomorrow, less than a year after her first riding lesson, this was just the sort of no-nonsense performance she and her team of teachers and advisers were hoping for.

No dramas – well, apart from Pacha Du Polder clouting the second-last fence – which may have drawn a collective sharp intake of breath from all those willing her to victory – but which hardly broke the momentum or poise of either horse or rider.

Already comfortably clear of his only main danger on paper – the teenager Big Fella Thanks, a veteran of four Grand Nationals – Pacha Du Polder simply strode on, pinged the last fence and sauntered home 29 lengths to the good. Pendleton’s participation at the Cheltenham Festival, however, is still to be confirmed.

This first success is a huge and welcome step forward, but taking on 23 crack amateurs in Cheltenham’s cauldron on a sell-out Gold Cup day is something else again and not a decision her team were ever going to take lightly.

According to Betfair, who have sponsored this whole “Switching Saddles” enterprise, Pendleton will have another ride in a point-to-point on Saturday before a final decision is made and communicated at a press conference to be held in London on Monday.

Pendleton, who dealt so charmingly with her Fakenham setback and her “bruised ego”, was unsurprisingly wreathed in smiles as she returned to warm applause before facing yet another media scrum.

“It’s fantastic,” she said. “It’s like flying. I really wanted to get round on the horse and it’s such an honour to ride such a lovely animal. It was very frustrating last time, but this sport has lots of thrills and spills.”

This was, even to the untrained eye, a much more confident and aggressive ride from Pendleton, one befitting a nine-time world champion, even from another sport. While at Fakenham she crept around in the rear, only to be unseated the moment she joined up with the rest of the field (and was bumped), this time she took Pacha Du Polder straight into the lead, out in front and out of trouble.

Pendleton has said that just to line up in the Foxhunter Chase would be like winning an Olympic bronze medal and completing the course, even right at the back, would be like winning gold. Well, the bookies are beginning to take her ambitions even more seriously than she is, in the first place assuming that she will be taking part, offering just 6-4 that she completes the course, and trimming her odds to 16-1 that she actually wins the race.

This big step in the right direction will not have placated all those who doubt the wisdom of this venture; many suggested after the Fakenham mishap that she should put her Cheltenham ambitions on hold for a year, while former champion jumps jockey John Francome called her “an accident waiting to happen”.

However, there have been numerous positive comments from within the racing industry, too, especially after yesterday’s win, most tellingly from one of the judges who matters most.

“She rode really well,” said Pacha Du Polder’s trainer, Paul Nicholls, an important member of Pendleton’s support group.

“She’s getting better all the time,” he told Racing UK. “People who say negative things about it should give her a chance and get behind her. She loves it and it’s great for the sport.”

Nicholls also later told the BBC that Pendleton was now “more than qualified”.