Patient route plotted for promising Kabral Du Mathan

Kabral Du Mathan looks set to swerve a Paddy Power Stayers’ Hurdle run, with trainer Dan Skelton favouring Fontwell and Aintree options this term.

The six-year-old is two from two since transferring from the care of Paul Nicholls this term, supplementing an initial wide-margin Haydock success for Skelton with an equally striking Relkeel Hurdle win at Cheltenham on New Year’s Day.

Kabral Du Mathan was cut to as short as 6-1 to successfully step up to three miles in the Stayers’ at the Cheltenham Festival, but Skelton is instead looking to the two-mile-three-furlong National Spirit Hurdle at Fontwell on February 22 before possibly heading to Aintree in the spring.

He told Racing TV: “Plan A is going to be to go to Fontwell for the National Spirit and then on to Aintree if it’s appropriate. We will enter in the Stayers’ in the meantime, just in case we feel differently and just in case the race takes a different shape.

“Given his tender age and the way he races – he races very enthusiastically – we don’t want to turn up in the Stayers’ and give him a really hard race, get to the bottom of him at that age and find maybe some horses don’t come back from such a gruelling experience.

“Next year, when he is another year older, you have to submit them to more questions but I think we can make up into that horse rather than just turn up first time over three miles in a Stayers’ against Teahupoo and say ‘we’re as knowledgeable and as hardened as you’, because we’re not.

“We’re going to take the sensible option unless something odd happens.”