Mountain primed to hit the heights

Mountain will bid to justify recent market support for the JCB Triumph Hurdle when he makes his eagerly-awaited National Hunt debut at Sandown tomorrow.

The four-year-old is as short as 8-1 with Betdirect for the Cheltenham Festival, despite not having jumped a hurdle in public.

The Montjeu gelding won a Listed race on the level for Aidan O’Brien and was eighth in the Vodafone Derby behind Sir Percy before joining Jonjo O’Neill’s string after finishing second to Short Skirt in a Newbury Group Three event last October.

O’Neill has elected to send Mountain for the Michael And Sandra Keep Ruby Anniversary Juvenile Novices’ Hurdle rather than take up an alternative engagement so that stable jockey Tony McCoy can give Mountain his introduction.

“He was going to go to Stratford, but AP has to go to Sandown to ride Straw Bear so we will send the horse to Sandown too,” O’Neill explained.

“He’s been pleasing me in his work at home and seems in good form.

“The original plan had been to go to Huntingdon after this for the Chatteris Fen, but they’ve moved that race and it’s next week now so it will come too quickly, although I have put him in just in case.”

McCoy also has high hopes of Mountain, who won two of 11 starts on the level and was also placed in Group Two company behind subsequent Irish Derby and Champion Stakes winner Dylan Thomas.

“I’ve schooled him and I’ve been pretty happy with him at home, but it’s a different story when you go racing,” he said.

“He’s a little horse and there’s not a lot of him, but his Flat form is there and he seems to take well to his hurdles which is a big plus.

“I’m looking forward to riding him and I’m hoping he will be a proper Triumph Hurdle horse after tomorrow,” he told At The Races.