Life's a Beach for Elliott in the Troytown

Gordon Elliott landed the €100,000 Ladbrokes Troytown Handicap Chase for the fourth successive year as Mala Beach took the latest renewal of the prestigious three-mile event at Navan.

Davy Russell sent the 12/1 chance, twice a Grade 2 winner in the past over hurdles but off the course for over 18 months before making a promising reappearance at Galway last month, past his full-sister Bonny Kate at the second last fence.

The Chris Jones-owned son of Beneficial stayed on strongly on the run-in to repel Don’t Tell No One by two and three quarter lengths, with Bonny Kate another eight lengths behind in third.

The winners’ stablemate Poormans Hill was another half a length back in fourth with Tesseract in fifth. Acapella Bourgeois was sent off the red-hot 7/4 favourite on his first outing for Willie Mullins and, after making a bad mistake at the fifth fence, failed to get his landing gear out when falling at the seventh.

Four Troytowns in a row for @gelliott_racing! @_Davy_Russel_ does the steering as Mala Beach lands the €100,000 feature at @NavanRacecourse: pic.twitter.com/GcqVJwk8ol

— At The Races (@AtTheRaces) November 26, 2017

Elliott said, "In fairness he is threatening to win a big race a long time. Simon (McGonagle) my head man rides him out every day at home and he had full confidence in him today. He said he'd love the ground and he thought he would go close. It hasn't been easy, it has been a long road and he's done alot of swimming.

"He was running in a Bobbyjo Chase a couple of years ago and fell at the second last so he deserved to win that today. If it ever came up soft in Aintree he could be an English National horse."

(MG & AM)