Victoria Pendleton answers critics in style

Victoria Pendleton’s Cheltenham Festival dream faces its make-or-break moment on Monday after the two-time Olympic cycling champion demonstrated her capability in the plate with her first victory as a jockey aboard Pacha Du Polder at Wincanton.

Pendleton needed to show she could hold her own on the racecourse after being unseated from the same horse at Fakenham last month, but she answered any doubters in style with an all-the-way success in the Betfair Switching Saddles Hunters’ Chase.

However, the decision on whether she will line up in the St James’s Place Foxhunter Chase on the final day of the Festival is out of her hands now, with the horse’s trainer Paul Nicholls, jumping guru Yogi Breisner and Lawney and Alan Hill, from whose yard she has been riding out, due to discuss the issue over the weekend before delivering their verdict on Monday.