Lucinda Russell’s William Hill blog: Betfair Chase will tell us if Corach Rambler is a Gold Cup contender

William Hill ambassador and leading trainer Lucinda Russell gives an update on Corach Rambler ahead of his run in Saturday’s Betfair Chase at Haydock.

Ready to rock at Haydock

Corach Rambler is in absolutely fantastic form at home and has been causing absolute mayhem around the place! He’s galloping around the farm in a very happy manner and upsetting the whole string which is really encouraging ahead of Haydock on Saturday.

I must admit that I do wake up in the middle of the night panicking about him because he really does mean that much to me. He’s very special and it’s a pleasure to be involved with him and be a part of his journey.

We’re pleased to see that it is drying up at Haydock, and the ground is looking like it will be soft which is a positive as I didn’t really want to run him on heavy ground. The ground at Kelso was pretty bad and he obviously didn’t have a great run there, so the fact it will be better on Saturday is a real bonus.

We’re under no illusions that it’s going to be a big challenge against some proper Gold Cup contenders, but I think he’s earnt his chance to prove that he’s up to this sort of standard and we’re really looking forward to it. It will tell us where we stand with him and whether the Gold Cup is a realistic aim.

I don’t like making excuses, but I wasn’t too worried about the run at Kelso as the ground was heavy and we always know that he needs his first run of the season. He can confuse us sometimes when it comes to identifying his fitness because he has such enthusiasm for the game that it appears he’s straighter than he actually is.

I know that the Irish tend to bring them back over hurdles when they’ve run in the National and I do think there’s a lot of merit in that, but I wanted to get him back over fences. You can probably put a bit of line through the Kelso run but we wanted to know where we were fitness-wise with him.

The Betfair Chase is a proper Grade 1 as it should be, and that’s what we want. We know he’s in great form and it wouldn’t shock me if he surprised a few people, as we know he’s improved plenty from that first outing. He’s won the biggest handicap in the country and we want to know if he is going to keep progressing and become a proper Group 1 horse. We wouldn’t be running him here if we didn’t think he had the potential to be.