Derham opts to wait for Aintree with Klub De Reve

Harry Derham has decided to skip the Cheltenham Festival with his impressive Dovecote Novices’ Hurdle winner Klub De Reve and instead wait for Aintree.

The six-year-old bounded clear after the last at Kempton at the weekend, just as he had done when winning over the same course and distance on Boxing Day.

“We’ve had a chat with his owner and we’ve scratched him from the Supreme and he’ll go to Aintree,” said Derham.

“Obviously he performed really well on Saturday. We just think the right thing to do by him is Liverpool because Cheltenham is coming a little bit soon.

“I think he’d be about 25-1 in a Supreme, but 8-1 or 10-1 at Liverpool. He’s a smart horse.”

Derham will still have a runner in the Supreme through Mossy Fen Road, who was surprisingly beaten a short odds at Musselburgh last time out.

“On ratings there’s 4lb between the two, but currently Klub De Reve has achieved more,” said Derham.

“Mossy hasn’t become a bad horse overnight, he just didn’t have his best performance that day. That’s life.

“Maybe I was trying to be too clever, I wanted three runs into him. We’ve done that now. I thought he was my Supreme horse all season so that is where he’s going.

“The easy thing to do once they have put up a strong performance is not run them, I thought he needed another run and he’s had it now.”

As for other runners at Cheltenham, Derham, at Kempton as part of a Jockey Club-organised pre-Cheltenham morning, said: “Jackie Hobbs is one I’m looking forward to, on ratings she’s got a bit to find in the Mares’ Novices’ Hurdle, but she’s a good mare and her owners want to go to the Festival.

“She finished in behind in her gallop today because I asked Harry Cobden to do that, she can get quite fizzy but he was delighted with her and said she went really nicely.

“If they went fast and it turned into a staying race, which they do in that, she’d have a chance.

“One Horse Town deserves to run in the Triumph, Dargiannini will go in the Coral Cup and Escapeandevade will run in the Grand Annual. He’s gone up so much in the weights he wouldn’t be a certainty in a 0-140 so he may as well run in the Grand Annual.”