Paddy’s Rewards Club

‘Sugar Paddy’ Chase

(Grade 1)

LATELY one of the great constants of this meeting is the appearance of the Nicky Richards-trained Simply Ned and the seemingly ageless 11-year-old yet again defied the odds to shock Footpad.

Twelve months on from getting this race in the stewards’ room, Simply Ned produced the performance of his life on his fifth appearance in the race. All the way back in 2014 he finished third at 9/1 – the shortest price he ever started for this race – and there followed two more placings before he was awarded the race at the expense of Min last year.

Just as he did in 2017, Simply Ned was returned at 16/1 under man of the moment Mark Walsh, who was making it a treble on the day, and in truth he looked to face a pretty stiff assignment.

The presence of Footpad, Great Field, Castlegrace Paddy and Ballyoisin made this a strong renewal and the market reflected the magnitude of the task facing Simply Ned. However, the David and Nicky Robinson-owned gelding once again rose to the challenge with an impressive late surge.

Understandably all eyes were on Footpad for much of the race and he jumped superbly and tanked his way through the race as he did his best to banish his abortive reappearance to the distant past. An expectant roar went up from the crowd when Footpad cleared the last with aplomb and scampered into a lead of several lengths.

However, Simply Ned launched a tremendous late surge for Walsh and the English raider swept by the Mullins horse to score by half a length. Ordinary World ran a fine race to finish a further four and three quarter lengths away in third.

“That’s brilliant. I thought that he ran a grand race at Cheltenham (second to Sceau Royal) last month. As he’s getting older he takes a bit more getting fit but I felt that run left him spot on for this,” said Richards.

“He’s a horse who has often shown his best form up until the end of January so we train him for this end of the season and maybe try and catch some of the big guns cold. They will be heading on to the likes of Cheltenham and Punchestown whereas this is our Gold Cup.

“He’s getting on in age and I said to David and Nicky a while back that we wouldn’t over race him but that if he was in good fettle he would come here. If he’s in good fettle again this time next year we will hopefully be back again and in terms of this season hopefully we will bring him back here in February for the Grade 1 at the Dublin Racing Festival.

“He’s always run well in this race and been competitive but the one horse that annihilated him was Douvan here two years ago and Sizing John was second that day so it tells you what a race it was that year and what a horse Douvan is,” concluded Richards, whose bold campaigning of this horse has been well rewarded and perhaps it is something that his colleagues across the Irish Sea should take note of.

Later Willie Mullins reflected on Footpad’s effort: “I think he may just have needed the run. He missed a bit of time (at least 10 days) with the overreach he suffered at Naas and Ruby felt that he blew up. I was pleased to see him jump the way he did last season and we will keep going down the route we are going.”