Image © Healy Racing
Champion point-to-point handler Colin Bowe added a fourteenth Cheltenham Festival success to the list of prizes claimed by his graduates when Chianti Classico landed the Ultima Handicap Chase.
Champion point-to-point handler Colin Bowe added a fourteenth Cheltenham Festival success to the list of prizes claimed by his graduates when Chianti Classico landed the Ultima Handicap Chase.
Bought for £105,000 at the Tattersalls Cheltenham April sale in Newmarket after he had defeated Stumptown in a four-year-old maiden at Tipperary, the Shantou gelding actually renewed rivalries with that Kim Muir runner-up in the premier handicap.
Travelling strongly throughout, the now seven-year-old was never too far away from the pace and once striking the front before the third-last, Kim Bailey’s charge was not headed as he went on to defeat Twig by four and a half lengths.
Meetingofthewaters, a four-year-old maiden winner for Eugene O’Sullivan, finished a further length and a quarter back in third.
“When Aiden Murphy and I bought him, we always said we’d bring him here, but I never thought it would happen,” Bailed said.
“We’ve been knocking at the door here for a while so it’s great for everybody that we’ve done it today. It’s huge for the team. Having winners at Cheltenham is what it’s all about.
“The owners are big supporters of racing and Sir Francis Brooke is the King’s representative at Ascot. This has been the plan for a long time. After he was second at Kempton we hummed and hahed about the Racing Post Chase but they said Cheltenham is what we bought him for and Cheltenham is where we’ll go.”
The Irish %uD83C%uDDEE%uD83C%uDDEA CANNOT win this race!
— CheltenhamRacecourse (@CheltenhamRaces) March 12, 2024
CHIANTI CLASSICO, David Bass & @kimbaileyracing win the Ultima Handicap as the British strike back for the first time %uD83E%uDD4A#CheltenhamFestival pic.twitter.com/tMymAMLL3p
