Alan King hopes to cap season in style at The Cheltenham Festival

Trainer, Alan King, is enjoying a fabulous season so far and is looking to round it off in style at The Cheltenham Festival. With 93 winners this term, King is within sight of the century mark, something he’s looking to achieve for the first time in eight years.

With Cheltenham and Aintreestill to come, the 100 winners looks like it is achievable due to an impressive 24% strike-rate.

When asked about the success, King says “it’s a combination of various things, fine tuning. I think the better ground has probably helped my horses this winter. We’ve raced on lovely ground until the past six weeks or so.”

“The horses have been very healthy all year and the team at home work extremely hard. We’ve had a great run for the past two or three years bar one blip last March when they weren’t quite right. The’ve been very consistent.”

“I’m a great believer in getting winners on the board before Cheltenham because you are not going to train many there,” he said. “All any of us want is to be lucky enough to have a winner during the week. We had a blank last season and I don’t want another one of those.”

It has also been revealed that Mark Walsh has opted to ride Alan King’s Yanworth horse in Champion Hurdle next Tuesday. Barry Geraghty has been expected to ride the sevenyearold, as he has done on each of his eight starts over hurdles to date, however he misses the Cheltenham Festival through injury.

“Mark Walsh is going to come over and have a sit on Yanworth and Uxizandre, probably on Thursday, and the plan is that he’ll ride both horses at Cheltenham.” said King.

“I don’t know him at all, but he’s a very good rider.I’ve been very happy with both horses since their last runs.”

Yanworth has won the Coral Hurdle at Ascot, the Christmas Hurdle at Kempton and the Kingwell Hurdle at Wincanton, remaining unbeaten in three starts this season and is the 7-2 favourite for the Champion Hurdle. Check out all the odds for the Cheltenham Festival races if you think Yanworth will continue the unbeaten run.

Cheltenham officials are forecasting “good to soft” going for the start of The Festival which starts on Tuesday.However, the weather outlook for the week ahead is mixed.

“The forecast remains unsettled, with bits and pieces of rain coming in during the course of the next week amounting to somewhere between nine and 11 millimetres,” saidSimon Claisse, clerk of the course.

“I wouldn’t expect much change in the going between now and the start of the festival. For festival week we’re looking at temperatures of around 10C with little bits of rain here and there.”

“I haven’t changed the ground from Sunday, so it’s good to soft on the Old Course and good to soft, good in places on the New Course and the cross-country course. We’re very happy with where we are. The course looks in fantastic shape,” he added.