Chepstow © Photo Healy Racing
All roads lead to Chepstow and the Coral Welsh Grand National for Sara Bradstock’s Mr Vango.
Now the ante-post favourite with the sponsors following his victory in the London National at Sandown, Bradstock confirmed the Chepstow marathon has always been in her sights for the giant eight-year-old.
Mr Vango has been raised 4lb by the handicapper this week and while the Welsh National is an early-closing race, he picked up a 4lb penalty for winning so will effectively be running off his new mark.
“He’s in very fine fettle, very pleased with himself and full of beans. Now we’re just doing a rain dance, although it would be very unfortunate to have a Welsh National not run on very soft ground, but who knows these days,” said Bradstock.
“If he got his ground he’s got to have a good chance and we’ve always looked on him as the right type for the race, the softer the better for him and he stays so well.
“He went up 4lb in the handicap, the same as the penalty, so he’ll be running off his new mark. You always want less I suppose, but I don’t think we can complain too much.
“There are only so many races each year he can run and he’ll never run on anything quicker than good to soft because it wouldn’t be fair on him.”
Bradstock would love to run Mr Vango at Aintree over four and a quarter miles but concedes he is unlikely to get his favoured ground in April.
“My dream is for one day to run him in a Grand National on very soft ground, but that is very unlikely, it’s more likely to be a Midlands one!” she said.
“He’ll have cheekpieces back on at Chepstow. He wore them at Cheltenham (when third in last season’s National Hunt Chase) and he ran well in them, we just left them off on Saturday with it being his first run. He did wear a tongue tie for the first time, though, and I think that worked.
“His Cheltenham run sort of went under the radar, I felt. He was meeting the first two massively wrong at the weights and I said to someone the other day that if he’d been able to run in it under the new conditions, he’d have been a certainty!
“He’s still lightly raced, he didn’t start until he was six, but he is a giant, he must be one of the biggest horses in training.”
The closest to Mr Vango in the betting is the Nigel Twiston-Davies-trained Broadway Boy, second in the Coral Gold Cup most recently. However, his participation is far from certain.
Assistant trainer Willy Twiston-Davies said: “We’re not sure if he runs yet.
“He’s come out of his race well and he’s back cantering, but we’ll just let the dust settle for a bit longer before we make our minds up.”
