Remastered owner Garth Broom tasks David Pipe and Tom Scudamore with Cheltenham Gold Cup challenge

Today the jockey and trainer will discover if Remastered is that horse when the second-season steeplechaser lines up in Haydock’s feature Peter Marsh Chase.

Scudamore won last year’s renewal on the Venetia Williams-trained Royale Pagaille who went on to finish a distant sixth in the Cheltenham Gold Cup and who defends his Haydock title today.

However, no jockey is more determined to win a Gold Cup than Scudamore, 39, whose mount The Giant Bolster, a Cheltenham specialist, was leading over the final fence in the 2012 renewal before being caught by the Sir AP McCoy-inspired Synchronised. It still rankles.

And while Broom and his Brocade Racing colours were carried to Gold Cup glory in 2018 by the now retired Native River, Scudamore knows – from his experience – that such few horses are few and far between.

“I’ll tell you after Saturday,” he tells The Yorkshire Post when asked if the nine-year-old Remastered has the scope to become a genuine contender and threat to the Irish dominance.

But his circumspection is tempered by his absolute belief in the Pipe-trained staying steeplechaser who showed tremendous guts to win on near-unraceable ground at Wetherby’s Castleford Chase meeting in December 2020, before landing Ascot’s Reynoldstown Chase and finishing fifth to the progressive Galvin at Cheltenham.

And while Remastered was running a major race in Newbury’s Ladbrokes Trophy before coming to grief in a slithering fall at the fourth-last under young Fergus Gillard, he showed no ill-effects when finishing second in Haydock’s Tommy Whittle Chase just last month.

“He deserves to win one of these big races,” says Scudamore. “He was a good novice last year and you’d have to be confident that one of these big Saturdays is within his remit.

“I think he’s improving again – and we go there with confidence, although it is a bloody good race that will take a lot of winning.”

Scudamore is among those to lament the fact that Haydock is not the jumping test that it was at the outset of his career – or when his grandfather, Michael, and father, Peter, were competing. It was, he said, the best NH course in the country before the layout was altered to accommodate more Flat racing.

However, he said Haydock still requires accurate jumping and a horse with an abundance in stamina because of its renowned soft ground. While the going is unlikely to be as bottomless as it can be, Scudamore points to Remastered’s versatility and how a horse perceived to be a heavy ground specialist was excelling at Newbury on better going until coming to grief.

As for the Gold Cup, he says “you have to be in it to win it” – hence the horse’s entry alongside the likes of Galvin who won Ireland’s premier jumps race over Christmas – and that the aforementioned Broom has been telling him to find another Cheltenham horse for 15 years.

Broom concurs. He’s also a realist – just like Scudamore. “I said to David (Pipe) and Tom ‘I need to find you a Gold Cup winner’, but Remastered would have to win by 10 lengths to go down that route,” explained the owner. “We put him in the Gold Cup as he ran a cracker in the Ladbrokes Trophy before he fell and then he was giving more than a stone away to the winner when he was beaten last time at Haydock.

“We have been slightly frustrated this season as we thought he would be a bit further forward than he was but we are lucky to still have him as we thought for a moment we had lost him at Newbury. We will make a decision after Saturday whether to continue down the Gold Cup route or whether we go for something else.”

And while Broom is looking forward to seeing Remastered back in action he admits it was “emotional” making the decision to retire Native River, who insists he could have re-homed “50 times over” after calling time on the popular gelding’s long and successful career last month.

“He was so good to handle and he always ran with his heart on his sleeve. He didn’t know how to run a bad race,” added Broom.