'I quietly fancied him' - Atakan gets up on the line to land Sussex National

Monday: Plumpton

The first meeting of the new year at the East Sussex venue saw a display of pure tenacity from the marathon chasers as Atakan edged out Blame The Game to take the Sussex National after a right old slog.

Heavy rain on Saturday meant conditions were going to make the trip hard to get for most, but after a sustained duel from two fences out the Joe Tizzard-trained seven-year-old got up in the dying strides under Brendan Powell to deny Chris Gordon successive wins in the contest.

As connections collected their trophy there was a pantomime 'boo' from Gordon, who congratulated all involved, during a round of applause.

"I quietly fancied him today – I thought he would definitely place," Powell said. "For a horse who's having only his third start over fences his jumping is good and with Joe's horses you'll know they'll keep going."

This was a second course victory for Atakan, who made all to win by ten lengths here on his chasing debut in October, and there is hope he will progress.

"He's always looked like he would make a nice staying chaser so it was nice to see him do it. He really stuck his head down and fought well," said Chris Wald, assistant trainer to Tizzard.

"We're delighted for the owners. They've had some good horses with us and it looks like they've got another one too.

"We've had a few seconds over the Christmas period, so it's good to get a nice winner."

Foot-perfect Star

The tiring conditions did not faze Stage Star one bit as he put a disappointing effort at Newbury behind him when never off the bridle to defeat his sole rival in the opening 2m3½f novice chase.

Stage Star: bounced back from disappointing display at Newbury last timeCredit: Ross Kinnaird (Getty Images)

Mortlach could not lay a glove on Stage Star when he upped the pace and the Paul Nicholls-trained seven-year-old will now be aimed at the Cheltenham Festival.

Nicholls said: "I just don't think he was right for some reason at Newbury. Today he looked better beforehand, he went round there with a spring in his step, jumped well and was back on form.

"There's quite a valuable novice chase at Warwick in two weeks' time and a very valuable one at Lingfield in three weeks' time, so one of those would be next I would suspect.

"He'll definitely have entries at Cheltenham, in the Turners and Brown Advisory, and if we get him right we'll go for one of them."

Winning jockey Harry Cobden went on to complete a treble, justifying odds-on favouritism aboard Twinjets in the 2m4½f novice hurdle before steering El Muchacho to victory in the closing 2m handicap hurdle, both trained by Milton Harris.

Hansard (left): jumps into the lead at the lastCredit: Alan Crowhurst

'Proper horse'

Hansard put up a fine display in the 2m novices' hurdle, winning by two lengths despite giving at least 7lb away to the rest of the field, and trainer Gary Moore may be looking towards Cheltenham now.

He said: "I think he's a proper horse; we always thought that before he ran. Coming here today, giving all that weight away was never going to be easy but he's done it well.

"We might look at Cheltenham. He's got a lot of speed so we'll keep him at two miles."

Results, replays and analysis

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