Anthony Honeyball's Gustavian put in a superb performance on his seasonal reappearance to run away with the 64th Badger Beers Handicap Chase at Wincanton on Saturday.
In his previous two runs in the race the evergreen 10 year old had finished seventh behind stablemate Blackjack Magic in 2023 before filling a remote third behind Al Dancer in the £80,000 Premier Handicap 12 months ago.
However, there was no stopping the gelded son of Mahler, who put in an assured round of jumping from the front under Rex Dingle to gain his first success in more than two and a half years to give Honeyball his second victory in the race.
Having established a handy lead through the early stages of the three miles one furlong contest the 11-2 chance, making his first start since undergoing a wind operation, continued to hold a sizeable advantage heading for home on the final circuit.
Although Scarface attempted to mount some sort of challenge over the final few fences he could not quite get within striking distance of Gustavian who, after meeting the last on a good stride, before bounding away to score by nine and a half lengths.
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Honeyball said: “He was overdue it this horse. He had his pants pulled down at Exeter when he ran another stormer. Sam (Twiston-Davies) was so livid, but we couldn’t resist having another one in that veterans race and Credo came through and beat him that day.
“He had a really good second in the fog at Aintree and he literally got nailed that day. He obviously does go on a bit of decent ground and it does help his jumping.
“I think physically early season he probably just used his back a bit more and felt good in his body as he used it a bit more.
“Watching him jump today you don’t see any horse jump that sort of trip bar Desert Orchid. He was awesome.
“I suppose the wind operation has been significant to some degree, but he has run well in this race before and maybe that is all he had to do the way the race was.
“He is a bit one paced and you are a bit limited on dropping in him really. It is easier to dictate everything under your own steam.
“He is a ten-year-old, but you would think he was a five-year-old as he wants to go and you never have to chivvy him along he just goes.
“He is a good horse to make the running with as he does travel out of the gate.
“It has become an important race, but we never thought about it like that until we won it, and then when we won it we thought we would come back again and we will keep coming back for as many as we can.”
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