Armaturk heads bonusprint weights

Paul Nicholls’ Armaturk has been shouldered with top weight in the bonusprint.com Gold Cup at Cheltenham on Saturday week.

The seven-year-old, conqueror of Well Chief at the Cotswolds track on his most recent outing, must carry the steadier of 11st 12lb in the £110,000 (€158,995) showpiece.

He is one of five possibles for the Ditcheat handler, together with Thisthatandtother (11st 5lb), L’Ange Au Ciel (10st), Le Duc (9st 13lb) and Spring Margot (9st 8lb).

Martin Pipe has a typically strong hand – headed by Our Vic (11st 3lb) and Paddy Power and Hennessy Gold Cup hero Celestial Gold (11st 4lb).

The Nicholashayne maestro also has the option of running Seebald (11st 10lb), who made Best Mate work hard on his comeback run at Exeter last month, Therealbandit (11st 4lb), Vodka Bleu (10st), Puntal (11st 2lb), Mondial Jack (10st 9lb), It Takes Time (10st 9lb), Iznogoud (10st 8lb) and Latitude (9st 9lb).

Nicky Henderson has won the last two runnings of the race and has four contenders this time around – 2002 winner Fondmort (11st 11lb), Calling Brave (11st 2lb), Scots Grey (10st 9lb) and Non So (10st 8lb).

Other notables include the Nigel Twiston-Davies-trained pair Fundamentalist (11st 7lb) and Redemption (10st 10lb), who was going well before falling two from home 12 months ago.