Connections hope they have found the key to Stage Star after two lacklustre displays to end last season.
The six-year-old returns to the scene of his Challow Hurdle success last December when he has a second start over fences in the Coral Racing Club Novices’ Chase at Newbury on Friday.
Having made a successful chasing debut at Warwick at the start of the month, the Paul Nicholls trainee steps into Grade Two company for the two-and-a-half-mile contest.
Dan Downie, racing manager to the Owners Group syndicate, believes a couple of sub-par displays in the Ballymore at Cheltenham and the Mersey Novices’ Hurdle at Aintree are now well behind him.
“After Warwick it was a tentative plan to go to Newbury,” said Downie. “We’re happy with him and he has come out of the race really well.
“We know Newbury is a track he likes and operates on, so we’d be hopeful he will get there and run well.
“Ground-wise, good to soft will be fine. He handles most ground and wouldn’t want extremes.
“But he is pretty versatile. You wouldn’t run on pretty quick ground and wouldn’t want a slog on very heavy ground, but I would have thought the ground won’t be either of those.”
Stage Star could take on the likes of Wincanton’s ‘Rising Stars’ runner-up Mortlach and Listed Chepstow scorer Sebastopol, who are among the nine potential runners. Downie insists it will be a good barometer for the future after lowering the colours of well-regarded West Cork and Skytastic on his chasing bow.
He said: “This is a good test as, on paper, that looked like a good novice chase at Warwick, but this is going to tell us a lot more.
“He had treatment for stomach ulcers and various things over the summer and he had a wind operation, and it is hard to know which of those it was to account for his bad performances in the spring. Maybe it was both, I don’t know.
“But if he is in good form, he is a very good horse.”
Comparisons to Bravemansgame, who similarly won the Challow Hurdle for Nicholls and went on to win his first four chase starts last season, are obvious.
Downie added: “We’ve always felt he would be better over fences and Paul has always had him a year behind Bravemansgame in a way, following him. I’m not saying he is as good as that, but we always thought he would be a chaser.
“I’ve no idea if he will follow the Bravemansgame route – that’s up to Paul – but stepping him up in trip would be interesting in time as well.
“I think he has got everything there and he is a horse, clearly, when he is on the top of his game, he is quite hard to beat, but you go there knowing it is a very, very tough assignment for him.”
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