Betway Champion Chase hopeful set to school for first time since accident in next 48 hours
Sire de Grugy trainer Gary Moore gives us the latest on his Betway Champion Chase hopeful…
I’m delighted to tell you that Sire De Grugy did his first serious piece of work this morning since his accident and both Jamie and I were pleased with what we saw.
The weather has set us back a little as we’ve been frozen here since Sunday, so we wanted to get this morning under our belts. He definitely looked like he needed it as he had a good old blow afterwards. We mix up who he works with the whole time and this morning he was up against a real good workhorse in Stonegate. His usual work companion Gaelic Silver is running on the weekend so it would be a bit unfair to put him through a tough work out with Sire De Grugy ahead of that!
The pair cantered six furlongs, then stepped the rate up again when coming back five furlongs and then did a proper bit of work back over six furlongs again. That got his heart pumping. He’ll work again on Saturday and I’d like to see him improve again on what he showed this morning. It wasn’t disappointing, he just needed it.
I’m going to sit down and talk things through with Jamie, but the plan is to school him for the first time since his accident either tomorrow morning or even Friday. We’ll just have to see how he is and also, more importantly, watch what the weather does.
The plan is still very much to head to Newbury two weeks on Saturday for the Game Spirit. We’ll continue to step up his work between now and then with his last proper piece of work on the Tuesday before.
Plenty have asked me in recent days what I thought about Sprinter Sacre’s reappearance on the weekend and the reality is I’m not concerned about the opposition. I can only concentrate on trying to get my fellow to Cheltenham to defend his Betway Champion Chase crown. First of all, we’re focused on Newbury and if he continues to head in the direction he is going and the freezing weather stays away, we’re bang on track.
