Paul Nicholls Rates Give Me A Copper as One of His Best Cheltenham Chances

Paul Nicholls invited the media to his yard yesterday and gave them a run through of his Cheltenham Festival contenders. Of the horses he spoke about, he gave glowing reports on many, including Clan Des Obeaux who goes for the Gold Cup, Topofthegame who goes for the RSA Chase and Give Me A Copper, who will run in the Ultima Handicap Chase.

It is the latter named horse that stood out, and a horse who could go onto have a very impressive few weeks in the spring. He is owned by the same ownership group that owns Clan Des Obeaux, and they could be in for a thrilling time in March and April with their horses. The plan for Give Me A Copper is simple, he will head to Cheltenham and run in the Ultima Handicap Chase and providing he comes out of that race well and he performs well, he will then head to the Grand National at Aintree in April.

The nine year old is a very fragile horse, and he has had more than his fair share of problems during his career so far, which you can see when you realise he has only had a total of seven starts under rules. The good news is that he has won four of those, including one win from three starts over the bigger obstacles.

He lacks a bit of experience for Cheltenham, especially because he is going to run in a maximum field handicap, but there is no doubt that the yard thinks he is on a very workable handicap mark. He needs to go to Cheltenham for the experience to give him any chance of running at Aintree, and even with the Cheltenham run under his belt, he will go into the Grand National with just four runs over fences, something we don’t see very often.

He returned from an absence of over a year to run at Sandown earlier this month, eventually finishing in fourth position and the yard were delighted with that, giving them something to build on moving forward. Despite not having an easy time in training, and facing a lot of setbacks, this horse still looks as though he retains most of his ability.

With some of the other names in the Nicholls yard being in the spotlight recently, they had a lot more focus on them yesterday. However, the yard really like Give Me A Copper, and this spring could be the time for him to shine and show exactly what he is capable of achieving.