Paul Nicholls’ Cheltenham Festival winner Caldwell Potter will step up to three miles for the first time at Aintree early next month.
A highly regarded Grade 1 winner over hurdles when trained by Gordon Elliott in Ireland, Caldwell Potter became the most expensive National Hunt horse ever sold at public auction after fetching 740,000 euros and arrived at Paul Nicholls' with a lofty reputation.
Following a convincing chasing debut success at Carlisle, things didn't exactly go to plan after defeats at Cheltenham and Windsor on his next two starts.
However, a commanding all-the-way success in the Jack Richards Novices' Handicap Chase at the Cheltenham Festival last week has given Nicholls reason to step the unexposed seven-year-old, who ran in the colours of the late John Hales, back up in grade and trip with both the Manifesto Novices' Chase and the Mildmay Novices' Chase possible targets at Aintree.
Speaking on his weekly blog Ditcheat Diaries, Nicholls said: "It was a fantastic win, good for the horse and good for all the owners,"
"He'd had a fair bit of stick because of his price tag (€740,000), which was quite harsh because he'd actually run well all season.
"Rome wasn't built in a day. As I've always said, it just takes a little while to deal with the problems we've got with him, but we got his feet sorted out and in the last month he really took a step forward and was showing us what we wanted to see.
"It was a good, positive, fantastic ride from Harry (Cobden) and he just galloped them in the ground. He jumped awesome, we were thrilled with him.
"He's come out of the race fine and the idea is we'll go to Aintree, where he'll have the option of going over two and a half miles and three. I'm quite keen to step him up to three actually to see where we go next year.
"I don't think you could say he wasn't staying the other day, that trip suits him a lot better as he can travel in his comfort zone. He hasn't had a lot of racing, so he'll definitely join the team for Aintree and I'm quite keen to step him up to three miles."
