All systems go for Flow bid

Paul Nicholls has insisted that lack of race-fitness will not be used as an excuse when Strong Flow lines up in next week’s totesport Gold Cup at Cheltenham.

A fractured bone in his knee meant the eight-year-old failed to reach the racecourse this season until January, when he finished third in a handicap hurdle at Warwick.

The runaway winner of the 2003 Hennessy Cognac Gold Cup, Nicholls was adamant before his return that he would improve significantly for it and he was again satisfied by his subsequent effort behind Farmer Jack in the Aon Chase at Newbury.

“He’s winging away and we’re really happy with him at the moment,” Nicholls said yesterday.

“We have a great gallop for getting horses fit – it rises about 250 feet from top to bottom for about four furlongs.

“When we were getting him ready for Newbury he was doing two or three canters a day, sometimes four when he was doing one in the afternoon as well.

“But now he’s just doing one every other day as he’s at his peak.

“It would have been nice to have been to Cheltenham and had a run around because it would be one more thing to eliminate as we get closer to the race.

“But if you look at the Hennessy you’d have to say that he’d have won by even further if it had been an uphill finish – I’m not worried about him staying.

“In fact in the Aon he was running over two furlongs less than the Hennessy and you’d have said that he might have appreciated the extra distance there.”

Nicholls did concede, however, that fast ground in the blue riband would be a concern.

“I wouldn’t want the ground too quick for him because like all horse who have had leg problems I’d be worried about jarring him up,” he explained.

“But he’s never shown any sign of his injury since he came back – there wasn’t any stiffness even after Newbury where you’d have been worried about him bringing it on with his big, exuberant jumping.

“The Gold Cup is going to be an interesting race.

“If Best Mate runs only as well as he did against Seebald at Exeter or in Ireland then there will be at least five or six horses who can possibly win it.

“I’m in the dark as much as anyone as to whether it will be Strong Flow, but we’re just where we’d want to be right now.”