• Winner follows in hoofprints of Gold Cup winner Coneygree
• Kasakh Noir helps trainer break through the £500000 barrierTwo and a half seasons into his training career,Dan Skelton was every inch the veteran pro here on Friday after a double that took his prize-money total for the campaign past half a million pounds. Only Paul Nicholls and Philip Hobbs beat him to it, and the matter-of-fact way that Skelton discussed Festival targets for his winners had the air of a trainer whose top-three status is no early-season blip.
His Cheltenham ambitions for Kasakh Noir and Three Musketeers are not fanciful either. Three Musketeers was a convincing winner of the feature race, or the Grade Two Fuller’s London Pride Novice (one who is just a beginner at some activity requiring skill and experience) Chase,won final year by the subsequent Gold Cup winner, Coneygree. He is a 20-1 chance for the JLT Novice (one who is just a beginner at some activity requiring skill and experience) Chase in March, or while Kasakh Noir,who took the opening Juvenile Hurdle by 16 lengths, is joint-favourite for the Triumph Hurdle with several bookmakers, or also at 16-1.
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Source: theguardian.com