REST OF THE CARD

SIZING Codelco, 10/1, looked a stayer at Cheltenham and he raced over the three miles and a furlong he needed this time in the Listed Betway Handicap Chase.

It was still surprising that he took his field apart, leading from the 12th and finally pulling well clear to beat Rightdownthemiddle by 13 lengths with Starchitecht well held in third.

“I made a bit of a mess of training him this season,” Tizzard said.

“He finished second to Top Notch, then I put blinkers on, then cheekpieces and now I took them off again. That seems to have worked!”

The opening Gaskells Handicap Hurdle looked a very intricate affair over three miles but few had any hope of keeping tabs on 11/1 winner Fountains Windfall in the closing stages. Anthony Honeyball’s seven-year-old made virtually every yard and came home eight lengths ahead of No Comment with Dadsintrouble and No Hassle Hoff third and fourth.

Fountains Windfall had won a couple of novice events and this looked much harder but the drying ground helped immensely and he simply ran his rivals ragged under David Noonan.

“We always thought three miles on good ground were the conditions for him and we had him in the Grade 1 yesterday but the right thing was to run him in the handicap,” Honeyball said.

“I think we’ll go down the hurdling route a couple of times and then he’ll make a lovely chaser.”

The closing Pinsent Masons Handicap Hurdle for conditionals and amateurs also produced a pretty easy winner in 8/1 chance Chesterfield, who is by the sprinter Pivotal but stayed this two miles plus in style.

Trained by Seamus Mullins and partnered by young Daniel Sansom, who could claim 10lb riding for his own stable, Chesterfield was left clear when John Constable came down at the last but still had plenty left at the time and fairly sprinted up the run-in.

The handicapper will make things a good deal tougher next time.

Tizzard wins trainer award

COLIN Tizzard won the Irish Thoroughbred Marketing Leading Trainers’ Award for the first time, saddling four winners. All were ridden by Robbie Power, who was top jockey with those four, one ahead of Barry Geraghty. It is 10 years since Power won the Grand National for Gordon Elliott on Silver Birch.

It was a clean sweep all round this year, because all four winners were also owned by Ann and Alan Potts, who have been instrumental in boosting the fire-power at Tizzard’s Dorset stable.

TV coverage of Grand National

ITV Racing’s coverage of the Grand National drew a five-minute peak audience of 8.2m, an 18% drop from a peak of 10m in 2016 when the National was covered by Channel 4, although ITV’s audience share during the race was 62%, up 3% on C4’s share in 2016.

ITV’s wider reach was expected to boost viewing figures for racing’s biggest day, one of the main reasons for racing’s decision to award the contract to ITV, four years after C4 had itself taken over the Aintree coverage from the BBC. As a result, the bare figures for ITV’s coverage were disappointing. However, warm temperatures across the country on Saturday were given as a reason for the drop in the total television audience in the afternoon.

The overall UK television audience between 2pm and 6.20pm on Saturday was down by 27%, the equivalent of 3.3m fewer people in front of their televisions, while ITV’s 62% peak share of that audience was the station’s highest for any event since England’s match against Iceland in Euro 2016 last June.

Coneygree to Punchestown

THE Punchestown executive must be delighted with the big names from Cheltenham and Liverpool likely to take in the festival later this month.

This year’s Gold Cup winner Sizing John will be joined in the Coral Punchestown Gold Cup line-up by 2015 Cheltenham hero Coneygree. The latter is particularly brittle but has stood his training well of late and Mark Bradstock is delighted with him.