Embassy Gardens stakes Cheltenham claim

Cheltenham festival prospect Embassy Gardens (8/13f) was an impressive winner of Naas' Grade 3 Finlay Ford At Naas Novice Chase today, scoring easily for trainer Willie Mullins, jockey Paul Townend and owner Sean Mulryan.

Townend chartered an outside course on the eight-year-old Shantou-gelding who moved to the front jumping the second-last and from there, stayed on strongly to score impressively by 10 lengths from Sandor Clegane

Mullins, earlier successful with the Townend-partnered Zarak The Brave reported “that was a really good performance and what I like about this horse is that he really loves jumping. When he sees a fence he wants to jump it and that’s a huge asset in this game.

“He jumps, stays and does everything right. He’s learned to settle now and is much easier to ride. He looks a natural for staying chasing and he’ll go for one of the staying chases in Cheltenham.”

Paddy Power later cut Embassy Gardens to 7/2 (from 4/1) for the National Hunt Chase & 5/1 (from 6/1) for Brown Advisory.

Sandor Clegane's trainer Paul Nolan expressed his own satisfaction with his runner-up, saying “he ran well and came up against a good horse. He’ll probably go to Cheltenham and see where that takes us.

“It probably wasn’t ideal to make the running but you couldn’t say that it cost us. He was a bit slow twice at the ditch but other than that jumped well.”

Quotes from Alan Magee