Elegant Escape heads pointing quintet for Ladbrokes Trophy

A somewhat smaller field of 14 runners has been declared for Saturday’s Ladbrokes Trophy at Newbury, including a strong team of Irish point-to-point graduates, led by Colin Tizzard’s Elegant Escape.

Second to none other than Samcro on his one and only start between the flags in Ireland at Monksgrange as a four-year-old, the son of Dubai Destination was a Grade 2 winner at Newbury’s big jumps meeting of the year in 2017, and he will be looking to follow in the footsteps of his stable companion, and fellow point-to-point graduate, Native River, who won the £250,000 Grade 3 prize for the Tizzard team in 2016.

Now a six-year-old, Elegant Escape made a winning return to action at Sandown three weeks ago when taking the Listed Future Stars Intermediate Chase, defeating the Ladbrokes Trophy favourite, Thomas Patrick, in the process.

In all, five pointing graduates will face the starter at 3pm on Saturday, with Ms Parfois next best in the market.

The daughter of Mahler, who won her four-year-old mares’ maiden for Martin Hassett, has finished second in each of her last three starts, including the National Hunt Chase at the Cheltenham Festival, and in Aintree’s Grade 1 Mildmay Novices’ Chase.

She is one of horses in the line-up to have won a four-year-old maiden for Hassett, as he also saddled Dingo Dollar to win his Bellharbour four-year-old maiden in 2016.

The six-year-old narrowly missed out on a big prize at Ayr in the spring and is a general 8/1 shot for Wayne Hutchinson and Alan King.

Point-to-Point regular Aine O’Connor has been rewarded with the ride aboard another pointing graduate, American, for her brother-in-law Harry Fry.

Another to have won a four-year-old point-to-point, American also got off at the first time of asking at Rockfield for Robert Tyner, when getting the race in the steward’s room, and he is features at 12/1 on his first start since finishing ninth in the Cheltenham Gold Cup.

Go Conquer completes the pointing quintet, having run twice between the flags for Donnchadh Doyle, and he will be the mount of Jamie Moore on just his second start for the Nigel Twiston-Davies yard, having previously won a valuable pot at Ascot for Jonjo O’Neill.