Bear tests Cheltenham credentials

Straw Bear will bid to book his place at Cheltenham when he has his second start for Nick Gifford and JP McManus at Folkestone tomorrow.

The five-year-old is as low as 8-1 with some bookmakers for the Anglo Irish Bank Novices’ Hurdle at the Festival after a fluent victory at Leicester three weeks ago.

In a field of 22, he trounced Nikola by seven lengths with hot favourite Acambo, trained by Martin Pipe, a length back in third and no less than 21 lengths further back to the fourth home, Cordial.

Straw Bear now faces 14 rivals in division one of the Westenhanger Railway Station Novices’ Hurdle.

“He’s in great form and we’re very happy with him,” said Gifford, who acquired the Diesis gelding out of Sir Mark Prescott’s stable.

“We’ve tried to find as easy a race as we can for him just to further his education.

“There’s always bigger fish to fry later on, but we want to hear what AP (McCoy) says when he comes back tomorrow as to whether he needs another run or not.

“He’ll have to run well and he’ll probably even have to win tomorrow to warrant going to Cheltenham, so we’ll learn an awful lot more from the race.

“We were very pleased with his first run but you can get some funny results on very soft ground. A lot of horses don’t like that sort of ground so we might well have been flattered.

“If he does go and do it again we can obviously get a bit more excited.”