Alan King hoping for new year resolution at Cheltenham

Medermit

As a Scot, Hogmanay celebrations are firmly inked into Alan King’s calendar and he will turn the page to a new year with even greater enthusiasm than usual.

For a trainer who has 11 Cheltenham Festival winners the score of 0-53 at the track during last season captured a period that could be described as character building – although best not within King’s hearing.

A winner with promising novice hurdler Iolith at Taunton on Thursday, who was carrying a penalty for a previous win at Kempton Park, has the German recruit on the team in search of that 12th Festival victory, in the Supreme Novices' Hurdle, with just the one race planned beforehand.

King plans to be out in force for Cheltenham’s New Year’s Day meeting as he bids to build on the healthy 19% strike-rate the stable achieved during December.
Medermit, who finished second in a Supreme Novices' Hurdle and seventh in last season’s Champion Hurdle, is one of the highest-rated hurdlers to go chasing in recent years and won on his fencing debut at Aintree but then blotted his copybook when he refused at Huntingdon.

His career got back on the right track at Plumpton last time out and he now steps up in class for the Grade Two Tigmi Travel Dipper Novices´ Chase. Speaking on his website, King said: "We have some big guns to fire, so hopefully, we'll get lucky somewhere along the line. Medermit runs in the Dipper Novices’ Chase, which we won with My Way de Solzen. I have not schooled him since he won at Plumpton, but he has done plenty of cantering up the hill and seems in very good order. This is the natural progression and will provide stronger opposition, but it should tell us where we stand and it will be good to gain some experience around Cheltenham.”

Karabak has had a bit too much experience of taking on Big Buck’s for King’s liking, but he won for the first time in nearly two years at the last Cheltenham meeting and goes again with a view to being prepared for the World Hurdle.

“Karabak, who showed great courage to win at the last meeting, goes back for the New Year's Day Hurdle. He does not need a lot of work to keep him straight so the recent freeze which has held up many of the horses won't have affected him so much. We purposely sidestepped the Long Walk Hurdle as there is no point in taking on Big Buck’s again until we have to in the World Hurdle, but he is rated 161 so his chance is there for all to see in this race,” King said.

“Habbie Simpson has done us proud and will run in the novice hurdle with his penalties, Blazing Bailey and Il Duce give us two strings to our bow in the staying handicap chase, and introduce a nice horse in the bumper in Jojabean, who is a full-brother to Raya Star. He has pleased me at home, though he has not had the ideal preparation so whatever he achieves here he is one to keep an eye on for later on.”

Exeter’s preparations have been thrown up in the air by the weather and landed as an all-hurdles card but still a tempting target. “I am looking forward to running Salden Licht with topweight in the two-mile handicap hurdle,” King said. “He was due to run in The Ladbroke but that was abandoned, but he has had a nice break since he ran so well in the November Handicap at Doncaster, and I hope and think that he will run a big race back over timber.”

Paul Wheeler

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