Gavin Cromwell
Gavin Cromwell’s William Hill blog: Flooring Porter set to return in Cleeve Hurdle
William Hill ambassador Gavin Cromwell has revealed that Flooring Porter will return in the Cleeve Hurdle at Cheltenham Trials Day on Saturday 24th January.
Cleeve Hurdle return
We’re delighted to have Flooring Porter back. He did a nice bit of work on the track after racing at Fairyhouse yesterday and he’d had another racecourse gallop at the start of the month.
It has been a very long journey getting him back, but hopefully that’s all behind us now and we can get him back on track. There have been a lot of people involved in his recovery and getting him back to the racecourse: Ger Kelly down at Fethard Equine Hospital has done a lot of work with him and the owners have been very patient. He’s been a brilliant horse for everybody, so we wanted to give him every chance to come back.
He’s loving life. He’s 11 years of age now but he doesn’t know it – he’s still like a four-year-old! He’s a bit mad, but that’s just him. He’s very hard on himself at home and he gets himself fit, he’s had two racecourse gallops and although he will obviously improve for his first run back, we’re happy with him. He’s in good shape mentally and physically.
The plan now is to go to Trials Day at Cheltenham for the Cleeve Hurdle. It’s not ideal to be travelling for his first run back after so long, but he needs to go left-handed, the timing was good and we’ll take our chance. The dream is alive.
Stayers’ Hurdle and Grand National options
The main thing is to get the Cleeve Hurdle out of the way and make a plan from there. He has the Stayers’ Hurdle entry because we wanted to cover all bases for him, but he also has the option to go chasing. We’ll see how we get on.
The Stayers’ Hurdle and Grand National are his options and he’d need one more run to qualify for the National. If we were to go that route, we’d probably go to Navan for the Webster Cup on the February 28th. If we do go that route, it would be five weeks from the Cleeve to Navan, then five weeks from Navan to the National.
