The Cheltenham Festival hope Grands Crus has been pulled out of Saturday’s Argento Chase at the track after connections decided the Grade Two event comes too close to the National Hunt’s major meeting of the year in March.
The unbeaten novice chaser impressed many observers when victorious in the Feltham Chase at Kempton on Boxing Day, and the trainer David Pipe had been considering running him out of novice company this weekend.
However, Grands Crus will now not line up in the Cheltenham feature, for which he was the 5-2 ante-post favourite.
Pipe revealed the news first on Twitter. He said: “We have decided not to run Grands Crus at Cheltenham on Saturday. We didn’t want to give him a hard race with March just around the corner. Grands Crus may run at Newbury in a three-mile novice chase on 11 February or he could go straight to the Festival.”
The exciting grey is favourite for the RSA Chase for novices at Cheltenham and also prominent in the betting for the Gold Cup.
Pipe stated: “A decision on which race Grands Crus will take in at the Festival is still to be decided and will not be made until much nearer the time. The horse is absolutely fine, though, we just decided not to run.”
Grands Crus proved second only to Big Buck’s in the staying hurdle ranks last term and has made quite an impression since switching to fences. A 10-length winner on his debut at Cheltenham, he then claimed a Newbury Grade Two before going on to success at Kempton.
The bookmakers have reframed their betting for the Argento Chase and Coral have issued new prices: 11-4 Captain Chris, 100-30 Diamond Harry, 7-2 Time For Rupert, 6-1 Tidal Bay, 13-2 Midnight Chase, 9-1 The Minack and 16-1 Carruthers.
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