Third time lucky for Dice?
Today he sends his seven year old Tumbling Dice to the Cotswold venue for the first big handicap chase of the new season, the Paddy Power Gold Cup over two-and-a-half miles, against an excellent field which includes the usual battalions from the Nicholls and Pipe stables.
Carrying some 10st 8lbs in this £110,000 contest, Taaffe is confident, Tumbling Dice will use his experience of the track to good effect.
“This will be his third time going there,” the trainer says, “and he has finished in the frame on each occasion. He was third in the Coral Cup at the festival meeting in 2005 over the same distance and he was third again last season in the Jewson Novice Chase behind Reveillez over the same trip as the Paddy Power.
“I’m very happy to send him there and I would say he has a good sporting chance. Obviously there will be a lot of good horses in the field, but I think he’s entitled to take them on.”
Second to Justified at Limerick on his seasonal debut last month, Tumbling Dice was “probably a little ring rusty” but is reported to have come out of that race very well and is in top form going to Prestbury Park.
“The way I look at it is that if you’re not in you can’t win. He’s been to Cheltenham twice and come back with something on each occasion, so I’m happy to send him again,” said Taaffe.
The trainer, who is in reasonable form this term with 14 winners already under his belt, will be the only Irish representative in the race and his charge will face the likes of Paul Nicholls’ Taranis – the ante post favourite – as well as Alan King’s fancied Kandjar d’Allier and David Pipe’s Vodka Bleu, who has been heavily backed for this race despite a two-year absence from the racetrack.
The two other Irish horses originally entered for the race, Charlie Swan’s Ground Ball and Michael O’Brien’s In Compliance have side-stepped the renewal.
But, coming as he does from the same family as Remittance Man and Treble Bob, Taaffe always reckoned Tumbling Dice was the chasing sort and nothing has changed that opinion.
“He jumped the big fences there in March and I was very happy with that performance and he goes back now with that experience under his belt and we will see how it pans out.”
Taaffe most famously visited the winner’s enclosure at Cheltenham in March 2005 when he sent Kicking King out to win the Gold Cup at his first attempt.
Although dogged by injury which caused him to miss a repeat twelve months later, Taaffe has been delighted with the health of his stable star and is predicting a return to the track for his stable star at Christmas.
“He has been making great progress at home and I am very happy with him. We have pencilled in a return for December 27 at Leopardstown and, God willing, that’s when you’ll see him next.”
Although unwilling to look much further than that for Kicking King, Taaffe’s hope is that he will go back to Cheltenham next March for another tilt at the Gold Cup and a much anticipated dual with reigning champion War of Attrition.
“We won’t be counting any chickens on this one and obviously we will wait to see how he is after he reappears at Leopardstown. We’ll just take it on a step by step basis,” the trainer said.
In the meantime all eyes will be on Cheltenham today when the National Hunt season truly gets up and running, but rest assured, another trip to the winner’s enclosure there, would be more than welcome if Tumbling Dice were to return the odds.
