Paul Nicholls on Cheltenham Festival winner Caldwell Potter ahead of Aintree bid

The seven-year-old grey, bought for €740,000 at the Caldwell Construction Dispersal Sale last winter, claimed his second win for Nicholls when jumping superbly en route to landing the Jack Richards Novices' Limited Handicap Chase under Harry Cobden.

Caldwell Potter, who stormed to a six and a half-length success in the silks of the late John Hales, will now form part of a strong team heading to Merseyside early next month, with races over two and a half or three miles being considered.

“It was a fantastic win, good for the horse and good for all the owners,” Nicholls told Betfair Racing.

“He’d had a fair bit of stick because of his price tag (€740,000), which was quite harsh because he’d actually run well all season.

“Rome wasn’t built in a day. As I’ve always said, it just takes a little while to deal with the problems we’ve got with him, but we got his feet sorted out and in the last month he really took a step forward and just in the last month had shown us what we wanted to see.

“It was a good, positive, fantastic ride from Harry (Cobden) and he just galloped them in the ground. He jumped awesome, we were thrilled with him.

“He’s come out of the race fine and the idea is we’ll go to Aintree, where he’ll have the option of going over two and a half miles and three. I’m quite keen to step him up to three actually to see where we go next season.

“I don’t think you could say he wasn’t staying the other day, I think that trip suits him a lot better as he can travel in his comfort zone. He hasn’t had a lot of racing so he’ll definitely join the team for Aintree and I’m quite keen to step him up to three miles.”

The victory was Nicholls’ 50th career win at the Festival and he said: “I’m going to take all the staff out. I never dreamt I’d have 50 Cheltenham winners when I had that first one in 1999 with Flagship Uberalles, with Joe Tizzard on.

“It’s been a fantastic journey since, if someone had said at the start of my career I’d be champion trainer 14 times and have 50 Cheltenham winners, it would be what dreams are made of and I feel very privileged.

"I just wish that Paul Barber (former landlord and owner) was there to watch it. I know he’d be up there shouting, as would John Hales when Caldwell Potter won, those were great guys who were a big part of my career and my life. It'd have been great but I’ll never forget them."

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