China Rock: Flop on Tuesday, but the star turn in Gold Cup on Saturday
Mouse Morris’ nine-year-old was a distant fourth in the two-mile Champion Chase at the track on Tuesday but stepped back up in trip to three miles and a furlong, he made no mistake in thetote.com Punchestown Gold Cup.
Sent off a 20-1 outsider, China Rock was cruising under Barry Geraghty approaching the final fence as front-running favourite Quel Esprit and challenger Rubi Light began to toil.
China Rock cleared the last in style to come home five lengths clear of last year’s winner Follow The Plan, with Quel Esprit only third.
“It’s nice to win a Grade One and that’s magic although he’s the magician, not me,” said Morris.
“He wasn’t going to win anything sat at home so I thought I’d bring him here. There were only seven or eight runners and there was great prize money down to sixth, I thought we might get four grand for coming fourth.
“He had a problem and we couldn’t find it. I thought he might have bled the other day, but he didn’t so we tried a tongue-tie. It made all the difference.
“He was travelling well in the (Cheltenham) Gold Cup and he fell into a hole, he was travelling reasonable enough the other day over two miles and he fell into a hole again, he just wasn’t getting home so it was obviously a wind problem. We don’t know what it is yet obviously but the wind was the problem.”
