Days like these were once almost a weekly experience for Paul Nicholls, as he strung together one title-winning season after another, so the 14-time champion will have taken particular pleasure from his double here on Monday as No Drama This End, in the Grade One Challow Hurdle, and Minella Yoga both emerged as contenders for the Cheltenham festival in March.
The Challow has often been an early proving ground for future stars over fences, and No Drama This End, Nicholls’s seventh winner of the race, joined former champions from the yard including Denman, the 2008 Gold Cup winner, and Bravemansgame, the 2022 King George VI Chase winner, on the roll of honour. Sent off at 4-9, the five-year-old made all the running under Harry Cobden and needed little encouragement to maintain a one-and-a-quarter length lead to the line.
“Someone just said to me, how does he compare with your other Challow winners, like Denman and Bravemansgame and all those,” Nicholls said, “and he compares with all of them. In three runs over hurdles, he’s won two Grade Twos and a Grade One, and none of them achieved that.
“To back it up after three weeks [from his last win at Sandown] is not ideal [but] we wanted to give him a nice bit of time before Cheltenham rather than go to Trials day [in late January] and it’s worked out beautiful, so we’ll go straight to the festival. I’d say that will be his last run over hurdles if that goes right, then we’ll go chasing.”
No Drama This End was already the favourite for the Turners Novice Hurdle over two miles and five furlongs at Cheltenham in March before Monday’s race, and was cut to a top price of 4-1 to go one place better than Denman, the runner-up in 2006, and give Nicholls his first ever victory in the race.
Classy novice hurdlers with the potential to be better still over fences are just what Nicholls needs as he tries to build back towards his former dominance and he will have taken particular pleasure from the success of Minella Yoga’s defeat of Act of Innocence, the 2-7 favourite, in the card’s Introductory Hurdle.
Old Cowboy (centre, No 5) on his way to winning the Coral Racing Club ‘Join For Free’ Handicap Chase at Newbury. Photograph: David Davies/PA
The result had added significance for Nicholls as Act Of Innocence was among several horses switched away from his stable over the summer by his owners, Gordon and Su Hall, while Minella Yoga’s owner, Michael Geoghegan, has been a significant recent investor in Nicholls’s Ditcheat operation.
“As you can imagine, I loved that, absolutely delighted,” Nicholls said. “He’s a very nice youngster and I obviously felt I had half a chance by running him against Act Of Innocence, and I couldn’t have had a better result, to be honest.
