Whispering Royal winning in Dundalk for Barry Fitzgerald© Photo Healy Racing
Whispering Royal will attempt to put himself in the Cheltenham Festival picture when he lines up in the Weatherbys Chatteris Fen Juvenile Hurdle at Huntingdon on Friday.
A useful cast of six have assembled for another competitive running of the juvenile event, with Paul Nicholls’ French import Kabral Du Mathan heading most bookmakers lists ahead of his first outing for the Ditcheat team.
Whispering Royal has already tasted defeat at the hands of the same connections’ Liari earlier in the season, but stepped up markedly on that Wincanton third when a taking winner at Doncaster last month.
Alan King’s youngster now has the chance to follow in the footsteps of recently-retired Barbury Castle stalwart Sceau Royal, who won this contest in 2016, while also going a step closer to booking his ticket to Prestbury Park in the spring.
“It looks like a hot race on paper, as it always is,” said Ella McNeill, National Hunt racing manager for owners Chelsea Thoroughbreds.
“Alan has been really pleased with him at home and he’s a horse that takes his racing really well. He’s been running since the beginning of the summer on the Flat and I hope we go there with a nice chance.
“I think he prefers the better side of soft so hopefully it keeps drying out and doesn’t get too tacky, but I think we will really know what we have got on Friday.
“He obviously won really nicely at Doncaster in the middle of December and I think this is the perfect next race to see what we have really.
“I think most of the horses in there will be looking at the Boodles (Fred Winter) at the Festival so it is nice timing in terms of it being six weeks until Cheltenham. We will see if we can go there after this.”
Gary Moore has won this with Kotmask and Perseus Way in the past two years and will be relying on wide-margin Fontwell scorer Soigneux Bell to bring up the hat-trick.
“He schooled well over hurdles, but then the first time I ran him over them he was disappointing and he was disappointing the next day at Huntingdon,” said Moore.
“When he won at Fontwell I was much happier, and I think he is just starting to come together.
“He needs to improve a lot to win this on Friday, but I did have this race earmarked out for him.
“He seemed much happier on the softer ground the other day as it was his first time on it over here since coming over from France. Hopefully he will continue improving.”
Although that was Soigneux Bell’s first victory in the three starts over obstacles at Fontwell, Moore is yet to totally give up on the four-year-old taking his place at the Festival in March.
He added: “I hoped this lad was going to be a Triumph Hurdle horse, but I don’t think he is that at the moment. He would have to win well on Friday and prove me wrong.
“There are some nice handicaps at the end of the season for juveniles and that is the route he is likely to go down.
“If the owners want to go to the Cheltenham Festival then he would run in the Fred Winter (Boodles Juvenile Handicap Hurdle), but he would need to go up in the handicap to get in that.”
