Nicholls still firing in the winners

Paul Nicholls, with a second successive trainers’ championship already sewn up, got his Ayr raid off to a good start when Otto Des Pictons ran out a convincing winner of the Dawn Construction ’National Hunt’ Novices’ Hurdle at the Scottish course today.

The five-year-old went to the front under Ruby Walsh at the fifth fence in the extended three-mile test and making the rest of the running, he came home with 17 lengths to spare over Ice Tea.