Ben Pauling feels he has Meetmebythesea in the perfect shape for Saturday's Paddy Power Gold Cup at Cheltenham.
The seven-year-old won three of his four races over fences last season including the Jack Richards Novices' Limited Handicap Chase at the Festival in March. He's currently 4/1 favourite with the sponsors for the weekend feature despite a 12 pounds rise in the weights.
However the trainer is hoping he can prove to be a Graded horse in a handicap and told Monday's Nick Luck Daily Podcast: “I personally hope he is. I’ve always liked him a lot and he’s a very, very laidback individual who doesn’t do anything flash at home. He’s done plenty of work for the race because we can’t go there half-fit, especially off a mark like that so he should be fit and well and if we can keep him in the form he’s been in for the last few weeks up until Saturday I’ll be excited to see how he goes. I do hope he can progress from handicaps."
He's the star turn in what Pauling hopes will be a team of around eight for the three-day meeting with the handler joining countless others in hoping for significant rain - and soon.
"We’ll probably run seven or eight, it’s still at the moment proving tricky to get some of these novices out. That’s why Taurus Bay ended up in the race he did at Aintree because you scratch your head as you try and find some ground that you think is OK to run on.
"It’s a tricky time but I think we might have a bit of rain around this week which will help us, even if it just helps keep what we’ve already got in. It’s only good to firm in the chute but we’d love to see some good to soft come into the going description and try and run a few more but realistically only seven or eight are likely to run.
“There are a couple of nice ones in the novice handicap chase, Four Springs has already run and won and I might run Kalkbrenner in the same race. Mourne Crystal is a lovely horse that we bought for a team of owners and he was a proper point-to-pointer and they paid well for him. He got beat down at Ffos Las the other day but was one of the first horses we ran and he really wasn’t fit but he’s come alive since that run. I dare say he’ll run very well in the maiden hurdle.”
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