Festival ace Bradley Gibbs has dream double on the horizon with rising star Fer Jaguen on course for Aintree

Training a horse good enough for a championship race is one thing, winning it with a substitute quite another. That was the luxurious position Welshman Bradley Gibbs found himself in last week when he trained and rode Premier Magic to victory in Cheltenham’s St James’s Place Festival Hunters’ Chase.

Had the nine-year-old mare Highway Jewel not suffered an injury last month, Gibbs would have been in her saddle. The disappointment some of her owners are feeling has been alleviated by their involvement in another rising star of Gibbs’s Hertfordshire yard, seven-year-old Theshoddytradesman, who is unbeaten in four point-to-points and is being aimed at the intermediate hunter chase at Cheltenham’s meeting on May 5.

Gibbs lives with his fiancee Claire on a farm owned by her father Julian Sherriff, whose colours are carried by Premier Magic and also Fier Jaguen, who has been trouncing opponents this season. The eight-year-old overwhelmed Looksnowtlikebrian by 70 lengths in December, and the beaten horse defeated a previous Cheltenham winner next time out. FierJaguen then thrashed the Tom Ellis-trained Dundrum Wood by 60 lengths – the vanquished horse won his next two.