French success story ready for Urgent return to Cheltenham

Urgent De Gregaine's 50-1 shock at Cheltenham on festival trials day might easily belong to a different era, one in which a French trainer could sneak across the Channel and remain undetected on the radar of the British punting public.

But the nine-year-old is not the second coming of Nupsala, the ground-breaking 1987 King George VI Chase winner, with his disarmingly straightforward trainer, Emmanuel Clayeux, describing him as a travelling companion for the yard's best chaser, Vezelay.

In any case, defeat of the Enda Bolger-trained Cantlow was far from a totally Gallic affair, given that it put Felix de Giles back in the most coveted winner's enclosure in jump racing, eight years after he landed the inaugural Martin Pipe Conditional Jockeys' Handicap Hurdle aboard Andytown for boss Nicky Henderson.