Joe Tizzard: “Native River ticks all the boxes for Gold Cup glory”

Albert Bartlett

Kilbricken Storm will love the ground. I’m not sure he’s the classiest horse in the field but on he will really relish this surface. He won a Grade 2 around Cheltenham and we then ran him back too quickly in The Challow when our horses had just hit a quiet patch. I’m looking forward to running him. He would have an each way chance at best. He’s fit and well and working well at home. He’s done enough this season to deserve to take his chance but he might just lack a bit of class.

Gold Cup

I’m really excited about Native River. Dad and I watched him carefully yesterday morning because it was the last day anything could go wrong. We both watched him come up the gallop and he’s in lovely form. We’ve had a perfect preparation with him. We haven’t missed a day. We were thrilled with him at Newbury, and he came out of it perfectly. There were no nicks and we were straight back to work on the Monday morning.

I’m not sure he is totally a heavy ground horse but I think he’ll handle it better than some of them. He ticks alot of boxes and has been campaigned for this the whole way through.

There are eighteen runners, so this is a big field for a Gold Cup. None of them have shyed away. Dickie Johnson knows our horse inside-out and he knows how to ride him. One thing I do know is that we won’t let Might Bite up our inner off the home bend. I’m sure Nico de Boinville will be thinking about last year’s RSA and thinking if he can get some cover it will stop a repeat of that swerve right. Well Dickie Johnson isn’t going to let that happen. 

I was third in the Gold Cup on See More Business and fourth on Double Thriller. On both occasions I thought I had a a proper chance turning for home but it wasn’t to be. It’s a big thing the Gold Cup. I’ve always been brought up to think of it as ‘the big one’. In my opinion, and in my family, it’s the biggest race of the year, so to have a runner let alone a winner is a big achievement. Now we are going in thinking we can win it, but when you have had the heartache like we did when Cue Card fell two years ago, you have to calm yourself. It would be amazing if he could win.