English/Ire
Klub De Reve set for Aintree mission says Derham
Harry Derham has revealed that his impressive Dovecote Novices’ Hurdle winner Klub De Reve will head to Aintree rather than Cheltenham next month.
An impressive winner at Kempton on Boxing Day, Klub De Reve took the step up to Grade 2 level in his stride when turning in an impressive performance to land the Dovecote Novices' Hurdle at the same track last weekend.
It was a victory that has plenty talking about his prospects as an outside contender in the Supreme Novices' Hurdle, however, Derham will instead now wait until Aintree to unleash his exciting six-year-old once more.
"We've had a chat with his owner, and we've scratched him from the Supreme and he'll go to Aintree," he 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."
Klub De Reve may not be bound of the Cheltenham Festival curtain raiser, but stablemate Mossy Fen Road remains on track despite suffering a shock defeat at Musselburgh last time.
Derham, who was speaking from Kempton at a media morning organised by the Jockey Club, added: "On ratings there's 4lb between the two, but currently Klub De Reve has achieved more,"
"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."
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