Big race double on the radar once again for Bailey

Now he hopes to repeat the feat with The Rainbow Hunter and Harry Topper after both young steeplechasers confirmed their promise with impressive victories in two of Yorkshire’s feature jump races this season.

He confirmed that The Rainbow Hunter, a gutsy winner of Doncaster’s Sky Bet Chase on Saturday under Nick Scholfield, will be entered in the National when the initial declarations are made today for the £1m race. This is the riderless horse which galloped past the winning post last year alongside Sue Smith’s Yorkshire-trained winner Auroras Encore.

And Harry Topper, the winner of Wetherby’s £100,000 bet365 Charlie Hall Chase last November, is on course for a crack at the Gold Cup after his battling third to a revitalised The Giant Bolster in Cheltenham’s Argento Chase on Saturday.

The progressive form of both horses leaves Bailey, based in the Cotswolds, on course for his most lucrative season since the early and mid 1990s when he came to prominence thanks to Mr Frisk, Master Oats and a Champion Hurdle success with Alderbrook.

“I was delighted with the way that The Rainbow Hunter ran,” Bailey told the Yorkshire Post. “His wind operation has obviously made a difference and he will be entered for the National.

“With a bit of luck, he will probably get in. His revised handicap mark will take him back near to where he was last year, and he just scraped into the race then.

“He was actually unlucky. Aidan Coleman was knocked out of the saddle at The Canal Turn by Paddy Brennan when he came to grief. It’s ironic that the fences are so small at Aintree now that they’re probably bigger at Doncaster.”

Like Master Oats, who won the 1995 Gold Cup in only his 14th race, Harry Topper is still relatively inexperienced – his run at Cheltenham was just his 14th career start.

At the age of seven, time is still on his side and Bailey offered this appraisal last night: “I was delighted with him, and the way he was running on up the hill.

“I do get annoyed when people tell me that he doesn’t jump very well. It was the best that I’ve seen him jump. He was giving weight away to his rivals on Saturday and I think various commentators have underestimated his ability.

“He does jump slowly when he is wrong at a fence, but that is only because he is such a gangly individual. TV pundits are very quick to criticise when things don’t go to plan. He’s improving all the time.

“If there is soft or heavy ground for the Gold Cup, he will run. If the conditions aren’t right, he won’t run.”

Harry Topper’s Gold Cup opponents will almost certainly include Knockara Beau, who ended the 18-race winning run of the previously invincible Big Buck’s in the Cleeve Hurdle.

Trained in Northumberland by the unheralded George Charlton, and ridden by journeyman Czech jockey Jan Faltejsek, who has twice won the world famous Velka Pardubice in his homeland, the 11-year-old will reappear at Kelso next month before his date with destiny at Cheltenham.

This was the horse’s first win in 16 attempts at the home of National Hunt racing and an elated Charlton said: “We’d been trying there for quite some time and we finally got one to come right. It was fantastic and I’m still on cloud nine. He’s come out of it perfect. We’re giving him a couple of easy days just on the horse walk machine. The plan is to go to Kelso for the Ivan Straker Memorial Chase on February 13.

“We’ll see what we get out of that and then we’ll probably go for an outsider’s chance in the Gold Cup. We were sixth in it with him in 2012, but I think he’s in better form now. For some reason the horses have improved this year. The wheels of some of them have got to come off to a certain extent, but you’ve got to be in it.”

Meanwhile the wet weather is tightening its grip on the NH fixture list. Today’s jumping action at Lingfield is a victim of waterlogging – and tomorrow’s meeting at Ludlow has already been called off.

An inspection today will determine prospects for Newcastle tomorrow while Thursday’s meeting at Towcester is already in doubt. An assessment will be made tomorrow.

Wetherby clerk of the course Jonjo Sanderson attributes the likely heavy ground to just five horses being entered in Saturday’s Grade Two Towton Novices Chase. He wondered whether connections do not want their horses to have a hard race prior to Cheltenham.

It is understood that the intended runners do include Sue Smith’s Coverholder, but connections have until 10am today to finalise their plans. This contest was won by Mr Mulligan in 1996 prior to his Gold Cup win the following year under a young AP McCoy.