Trainer O'Brien sure about Sister

Fergal O’Brien’s mare made a flying start to the campaign by claiming the West Yorkshire Hurdle on Charlie Hall Chase day last November.

Though Paddy Brennan’s mount has failed to add to her tally in three subsequent outings, she has performed with credit in the Long Distance Hurdle at Newbury and both the Relkeel and Cleeve Hurdles at Cheltenham. She holds an entry in Sunday’s National Spirit Hurdle at Fontwell, but O’Brien intends to swerve this race.

“She will go straight to Cheltenham for the Stayers’ Hurdle,” the trainer confirmed.

“I put her in the National Spirit at Fontwell as last year it was not very strong and the ground was quite soft.

“The owners are keen to go for the Stayers’ Hurdle. She has done nothing wrong all year.

“There will be a few coming over from Ireland and one or two over here, like L’Ami Serge, that she has not taken on, but she’s handled herself well all season and I don’t see why Cheltenham will be any different.

“There is no race that I have been disappointed with.

“I think three miles is her trip. The last day at Cheltenham she was sixth coming down the hill and she stayed on to be third, so she was not stopping.

“I think she is better on soft ground and we are unlikely to get that, but she deserves to take her chance.”

The three mile Stayers’ Hurdle already promises to be one of the races of the National Hunt Festival.

A stellar line-up is headed by Jedd O’Keeffe’s North Yorkshire challenger Sam Spinner, a proven frontrunner, while the race is the intended target of Supasundae, Jessica Harrington’s Irish Champion Hurdle winner.

It will also feature Cheltenham veteran The New One who steps up in trip after four failed attempts to land the two-mile Champion Hurdle for trainer Nigel Twiston-Davies who, ironically, is the aforementioned O’Brien’s landlord.

Nevertheless The New One has already won on six previous occasions at Cheltenham and the ever bullish Twiston-Davies is hopeful patient riding tactics will pay dividends as the veteran tackles this extended trip for the first time.

“We will be riding The New One differently and so on – we won’t be making all. He has won over two and a half miles quite a few times, but is he really staying on then? I don’t know,” said the trainer who confirmed his son Sam will ride The New One.

“Looking at the races he has run this season, The New One is probably better than he has ever been. I think his races have been incredible this season and the handicapper thinks so too as the horse is still very highly-rated.

“We had to have a go at the Champion Hurdle trials this season because they are so valuable and he has run well in all of them. He just has this huge earning capacity at two miles and he is likely to go back to that distance next season. That is where the money is and if he is earning £200,000 a year why do anything else?

“The New One has already won a championship race as he took the Neptune Investment Management Novices’ Hurdle in 2013. He is the horse of a lifetime – it would be nice to win the Stayers’ Hurdle as it was so sad when the first Champion Hurdle was there for the taking and he was knocked out of it.”

Reacting to the fact that this will be The New One’s seventh run at the Festival, the trainer said: “That is quite a statistic and hopefully he will be running there next year too. We’re not going into the race confident about the trip, but if does stay – people are telling me that he will and that he’ll improve for the trip – then he has a very good chance.”