West Approach came with a scintillating late run after the last fence to collar long-time leader Achille and win the Gr3 BetVictor Smartcards Handicap Chase under Robbie Power at Cheltenham on Saturday.
The nine-year-old son of Westerner, trained by Colin Tizzard, was the 11/4 joint-favourite and won by three lengths from Achille.
A jubilant Tizzard said: “It takes a bit of nerve, riding a race like that, doesn’t it? I ask him [Robbie Power] what he’s going to do, and he says he’d sooner get beat by coming late than by getting there too early. He says, ‘I’ll play it late. Don’t expect to see me until the end’.
“It’s nice to get winners under your belt – it gives you a bit more confidence. We’ve had enough beaten by a short-head in a photograph finish in the past 10 days. It made me nervous, watching that!
“It was poetry. Robbie came really late and he ran right to the line. All our instructions are always, ‘be in the first four and see how you get on’. Robbie’s an ice-cool man. He jumps slowly – we’ve tried blinkers, we tried him back over hurdles last year to try to get him to jump faster in a race, and it didn’t make any difference. He’s not in a hurry in life; I’d like him to hurry up a bit sometimes!
“I don’t know what we’ll do next. He came fifth in the Ladbrokes Trophy [at Newbury] last year; if you ever knew [owner] John Snook, you’d have a job to stop him having a go at that. That’s a fortnight’s time, which is probably a bit quick. He’ll go up a few pounds for this. I don’t know. He’s in the Ladbrokes for a reason but we thought this was the easier option. To win this was lovely.”
Asked about the Grand National, Tizzard replied: “He wouldn’t be out of it now. If you ride him like that – we’ve seen a different horse today. I can’t believe we’ve been riding him wrong for the past four years, but we’ll see.”
