Bass Hunter is primed to lead the British challenge in the Weatherbys Champion Bumper at the Cheltenham Festival \u2013 and trainer Chris Gordon is confident his stable star can make his presence felt.<\/p>\n
The son of Authorized was tremendously impressive on his racecourse debut at Newbury, strolling home eight lengths clear of the field, after which he followed up with a Listed success at Ascot.<\/p>\n
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The winter weather has prevented Gordon from getting another run into his exciting youngster, but the Morestead handler believes he is in perfect condition and well rested ahead of his planned appearance at Prestbury Park.<\/p>\n
Gordon said: \u201cHe\u2019s in great order and the Champion Bumper is the plan, we\u2019re really looking forward to that.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s had a good break. There were a couple of races we wanted to go for and both times it was bottomless ground. Windsor was very sticky ground and then at Newbury it was pretty bottomless for the Listed bumper.<\/p>\n
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\u201cThose were the plans with him and sadly we weren\u2019t able to get a race in. All I could see were negatives in running him in that type of ground so we\u2019ll be going to Cheltenham with all guns blazing in a couple of weeks\u2019 time.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bass Hunter is a general 12-1 shot for his Festival assignment and Gordon expects him to give a good account.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think he must have a chance. He\u2019s looked very impressive in his bumpers,\u201d he continued.<\/p>\n
\u201c(Son) Freddie just kicked on a little bit too quickly at Ascot, he came into the straight and kicked a little bit too early. If he hadn\u2019t kicked on so early I think we would have won it very comfortably.<\/p>\n
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\u201cHe\u2019s got pretty strong form to go in there with, but Lord knows what the Irish are bringing over\u2026 I wish it was just for English horses!\u201d<\/p>\n
Electric Mason is another of Gordon\u2019s string who goes to the Festival fresh, having been off the racecourse since November ahead of the Pertemps Final.<\/p>\n
He was second to Stayers\u2019 Hurdle hope Ma Shantou at Cheltenham in October before coming out on top in a valuable handicap at Haydock on Betfair Chase day.<\/p>\n
Gordon said: \u201cHe\u2019s got a great chance I hope. We had a great day in the sunshine with him at Haydock and he\u2019s run at Cheltenham before to qualify him for the Pertemps.<\/p>\n
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\u201cIt was the obvious race to go to after Haydock. I couldn\u2019t really see any benefit of running him again until we got to Cheltenham, but he\u2019s in very good order and we\u2019re looking forward to it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gordon is hoping for rain ahead of Andashan\u2019s likely tilt at the Martin Pipe Conditional Jockeys\u2019 Handicap Hurdle.<\/p>\n
He added: \u201cIt\u2019s 90 per cent we\u2019ll go for the Martin Pipe with him. The only thing that worried me is if Freddie couldn\u2019t ride in it as it would have been quite difficult to get a good conditional, but I think we\u2019re all good.<\/p>\n
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\u201cHe\u2019s been very progressive and we were third in a very nice race at Newbury over two miles earlier on in the season.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe stepped him up a little bit and he was a very nice second over two-mile-two at Haydock and then we went to two and a half and he won nicely at Newbury last time, so he\u2019s been progressive on all three of his runs.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll I can pray for with him is a little bit of soft ground \u2013 the softer the better for him.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Bass Hunter is primed to lead the British challenge in the Weatherbys Champion Bumper at the Cheltenham Festival…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":316660,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[158049,158048,158047,85,46,158050,157874,105],"class_list":["post-316659","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-bass-hunter","tag-cheltenham-festival","tag-chris-gordon","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-martin-pipe","tag-newbury","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/316659","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=316659"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/316659\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/316660"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=316659"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=316659"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=316659"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}