Round one: Champ starts RSA quest with first outing over fences at Newbury

Champ makes his first start over fences on Thursday at Newbury, a venue trainer Nicky Henderson believes is the perfect starting point for his RSA Chase favourite.

Named in honour of Sir Anthony McCoy, the winningmost jumps jockey of all time, expectations are high for the dual Grade 1-winning novice hurdler, who is returning to the scene of last year's Challow Hurdle win, the first step en route to his Cheltenham Festival target, for which he is a best-priced 8-1.

The seven-year-old beat the promising Getaway Trump in the Challow, found only City Island too good in the Ballymore Novices' Hurdle, and was mightily impressive when landing a second Grade 1 at the Grand National meeting.

While this is Champ's chasing debut, he has jumped fences in public. Henderson said on Wednesday: "He's been good and we've been happy. He had a school at Chepstow the other day, which they kindly let us do and was very helpful. So he's already jumped a few fences on a racecourse and got the hang of things."

Henderson could have waited for Cheltenham next weekend, but added: "I love Newbury, and not only because it's on the doorstep, it's a lovely place to start a novice chaser. They're proper fences but there aren't too many tricks in there. He proved at Aintree he stays three miles well. That said, two miles six is as far as I'd want to go first time.

"The problem is there's so few novice chases, the other option is to go two and a half miles around Cheltenham but I'd rather go to Newbury first time as sometimes I'm a bit nervous to go there [to Cheltenham] first time. It can still go wrong at Newbury, but it's a good sight less complicated for them."

He faces faces five opponents, including Beakstown, a Grade 2 winner connections have labelled a future Cheltenham Gold Cup horse, while the Jeremy Scott-trained Dashel Drasher could be the surprise package, with four consecutive wins last season and a higher Racing Post Rating over hurdles that Beakstown.

Scott said: "It's a very competitive race, but I was more concerned about getting him on the right track rather than in the right race as we want to turn him into a chaser. The travesty is the BHA have reduced the number of options so much you cannot avoid these high-profile horses as we just haven't got anywhere else to go.

"I was a bit concerned about his jumping, but we had a very good schooling session today so I declared him for tomorrow and I just hope he has a successful introduction to chasing – he has to get experience somewhere."

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