'I'd love to think we can rock up at Cheltenham' - Ben Brookhouse aiming big with juvenile winner Gozo

Ben Brookhouse hopes his two top juvenile hurdlers could be up to Cheltenham Festival standard this season and his aspirations remain high after both scored over the weekend.

I Still Have Faith warmed up for a switch to obstacles with a Flat win on Saturday while Gozo stepped closer to big targets with an emphatic victory in Plumpton's 2m1½f juvenile hurdle. He won much easier than the three and three-quarter length winning distance suggests and obliged having been backed into 11-10 from 15-8 on the day.

Brookhouse has identified the Wensleydale at Wetherby on November 3 and Musselburgh's £30,000 introductory hurdle as options for the pair.

The trainer said: "Gozo is a nice horse and is so gifted and he knows it but he always just does enough. He'll school big and bold first time then he'll go low so I said to Dad [Gozo's owner, Roger Brookhouse] I thought this would just be like a schooling session for him and someone must've heard it because he got backed off the boards.

"We'll probably give him another run, he idled rather than got tired there, but he'd probably go to Musselburgh. 

"We've got some nice jumpers and I'd love to think we can rock up at Cheltenham. It's our end goal but there's races to be won before then and I could turn up with my nicest horse there and get thrashed by Willie Mullins' by 50 lengths!"

I Still Have Faith won at Newmarket on Saturday in the 1m1f amateur Cambridgeshire under Fern O'Brien and will start over hurdles in the coming weeks. 

"He's done more than Gozo, he's been schooling since April and he's jumped everything," Brookhouse added. "We'll look to win a small race and then he could be one for Wetherby."

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