Young Twiston-Davies gains top ride

Tipped by many to be a future champion jockey, he finished fifth on the now retired Hello Bud as a 17-year-old jockey after heading the field on the turn in 2010. Pulled up at the 29th the following year, the same combination were seventh in 2012.

Yet this is only part of the story. Twiston-Davies and the legendary Hello Bud have twice won the Becher Chase over the National fences, their second success coming last December before the remarkable 14-year-old horse was retired.

An hour later and Twiston-Davies was completing a remarkable big race double over signature fences like Becher’s Brook and The Chair when Little Josh collared Sue Smith’s brave Gansey on the punishing run-in.

As such, no jockey has a better record at the Merseyside track than 20-year-old Twiston-Davies, who rides for his father Nigel.

This will also be the first time that the jockey has been entrusted with Imperial Commander in a race – previously he has always been ridden by Paddy Brennan, who is suspended after picking up a whip ban at the Cheltenham Festival.

“I cannot wait. He is a lovely horse and I am very lucky to be riding him,” said the rider. “If he takes to the Aintree fences, he’s got a great chance off top weight. He won his Gold Cup in 2010 off 186 and he’s now on 153.

“He’s had his setbacks, and he missed the Gold Cup, but he was brilliant at the end of January when he was touched off in the Argento Chase after a lay-off of nearly two years – and he’s come on for that. He’s a very exciting ride.

“I’ve ridden him quite a bit at home and we made a little National fence the other day, and he jumped it very well.”

It was on the day of the Cheltenham Gold Cup in 2010 that Twiston-Davies confirmed his rich talent.

As his father, and the stable, celebrated Imperial Commander’s famous win over Denman and Kauto Star, the teenager was left to saddle up Hello Bud for the Christie’s Foxhunter Chase for amateur riders on Baby Run.

When Baby Run safely negotiated the last, there was the unforgettable sight of the rider’s younger brother Willie – now a promising Flat jockey – running up the Cheltenham home straight in celebration.

It was the same at last month’s Festival when Twiston-Davies won the Neptune Investment Novices’ Hurdle on The New One who takes on accomplished hurdlers – like John Quinn’s Champion Hurdle third Countrywide Flame – at Aintree tomorrow.

This is a horse that Twiston-Davies senior believes could be better than horses of the calibre of Imperial Commander and Hello Bud.

“I’m not really sure why I do so well at Aintree,” said the trainer’s son with the characteristic humility that has endeared him to so many in racing. “I’ve been lucky to be able to ride good horses. It makes a big difference when you’re on better horses, believe me.

“The New One is a very exciting prospect, and he could go off favourite tomorrow, but I can’t wait for Imperial Commander. No Gold Cup winner has then won the National since L’Escargot in the 1970s. He’s a class horse and I wouldn’t swap him for anything.

“But I’m just glad I persuaded Nige to retire Hello Bud after the Becher Chase. He’s 15 now, loving retirement at the yard and it wouldn’t have been fair to ask ‘Budley’ to race again.”

Meanwhile the Sue Smith-trained pair of Auroras Encore and Mr Moonshine both excelled in their final piece of work on the trainer’s gallops on a snow-capped Baildon Moor yesterday.

Stable jockey Ryan Mania rides Auroras Encore, beaten a head in last year’s Scottish National, while Peter Buchanan gets the leg up on Mr Moonshine.

In other National news, Tom Scudamore rides the Philip Hobbs-trained Quinz, a former Racing Post Chase winner.

The Aintree going remains good to soft, good in places and clerk of the course Andrew Tulloch said “selective watering” will continue “just to maintain the conditions”.

Like the Aintree executive, Tulloch will be hoping that there’s not a repeat of the farcical scenes in 1993 when Jenny Pitman’s Esha Ness was first past the post in ‘the National that never was’.

After two previous false starts a large proportion of the field set off despite being called back and several went on to complete the full four and a half miles.

“At the end of the day racing was very lucky to come out of it with a comedy show of incompetence of the highest order and not a riot,” she said. “I wanted them to stop and if they had and said we’d race on Monday that would have been common sense.”