Johnson looking for Champion show

Trainer Howard Johnson is hoping for a commanding performance from his Champion Hurdle hope Chivalry at Kelso tomorrow.

Chivalry, the winner of his sole hurdles start, faces 16 rivals in the gg.com Morebattle Handicap Hurdle and a pleasing show could seem him taking on the likes of Rooster Booster and Intersky Falcon in March.

“We will have to see how he goes tomorrow. He would have to win easily and come up that hill like a tank,” Johnson said today.

The five-year-old beat Vintage Premium on his hurdling bow at Ayr in November, a race his trainer says took its effect on the gelding.

“He went all to bits after Ayr. He went very lean, but he’s all right now – I just gave him time.

“He’s in the Lincoln and if he doesn’t win tomorrow, I would be forgetting Cheltenham and maybe concentrating on a little novice hurdle, but I would be thinking more about the Lincoln than Cheltenham.”

Chivalry was an expensive recruit from the Flat for big-spending owner Graham Wylie, who has another live outsider for the blue riband event in the shape of Inglis Drever, winner of all three starts over timber.

Brian Ellison’s unbeaten Shayadi and the Len Lungo-trained Ebinzayd are also in tomorrow’s contest and look the main dangers to the son of Mark Of Esteem.