10th-Dec-2010

Reve De Sivola is too big here at 4/1, and he is well worth backing at that. Nick Williams’s gelding was a top class novice hurdler last season, he kept the very best of company. Perhaps because he didn’t hail from one of the very fashionable yards he didn’t enjoy the same high profile as some of the other top novices last season, but he continued to produce huge performances. He won the Grade 1 Challow Hurdle at Newbury in December, beating Restless Harry and Finian’s Rainbow. Okay, so he didn’t look a likely winner until about 50 yards from the line, but he kicked every hurdle out of the ground that day, and it was a huge effort to get up and win.

In the Neptune Hurdle, he was the only one to give Peddlers Cross a race, travelling well into the home straight and going down by just over a length in the end, the pair of them coming clear of subsequent Ascot Gold Cup winner Rite Of Passage. Then he came to Punchestown and won the Grade 1 Champion Novice Hurdle over two and a half miles.

He was a little disappointing on his chase debut, but that was a really hot race, one of the hottest novices’ chases that has been run this season to date, and he was actually travelling and jumping well until he got crowded out of it at the ditch at the top of the hill, made a momentum-halting mistake, and was playing catch-up from there. Even at that, he travelled as well as anything to the top of the hill before he just appeared to blow up on the run down to the third last.

He does have 14 lenghts to make up on Othermix from that run, but Othermix had had the benefit of a previous run, and it is reasonable to expect that Reve De Sivola will come on appreciably for it, his debut over fences. Nick Williams’s horses are in super form now, and Reve De Sivola has always looked much more a chaser than a hurdler.

There is no reason why he cannot be at least as good over fences as he was over hurdles, indeed it is reasonable to expect that he will be an even better chaser. He is only five, and he has huge scope for progression. He has very good form at Cheltenham even though he has never won there, and the fact that he jumped around the chase course there last time is a bonus. He has a big chance of winning today.

REVE DE SIVOLA (ADV 4/1, SP 3/1)