PAUL NICHOLLS has slammed the ‘disgraceful’ rule that has seen a Cheltenham Festival winner barred from running and a trainer £4,000 out of pocket.
The Bradley Gibbs-trained Premier Magic ran out a shock 66-1 winner of the St James’s Place Hunter Chase at the Festival last month.
Paul Nicholls was furious about a rule that stopped a Cheltenham winner running in Ireland
And Gibbs, who only trains point-to-point and hunter chase horses in Herefordshire, had entered the horse to try and complete a memorable double at the Punchestown Festival this week.
He spent £4,000 getting the horse over to Ireland in anticipation of running on Friday – only for Irish racing chiefs to prevent him running at the last minute.
It’s because Gibbs doesn’t hold a full licence in the UK – he can only run his horses in Hunter Chase races on British race tracks – so it is not recognised by the Irish Horseracing Regulatory Board.
Gibbs described the decision as an “absolute joke” before Nicholls voiced his displeasure at a similar situation with the Sam Loxton-trainer Shantou Flyer, a horse he owns.
Nicholls posted on Twitter: “It is a disgrace, I entered Shantou Flyer but was then told as Sam Loxton trained him he was ineligible too.
“Effectively (Irish) hunter chases are only open to professional UK trainers.
“Perhaps we should do the same with next year’s Cheltenham and Aintree hunter chases in reverse!”
And Gibbs told the Racing Post: “It’s an absolute joke. They say they want British horses to come over and they do this.
“The whole point of hunter chases is they’re designed for amateurs and they won’t let us run.
“They left it until Friday morning to tell me. If I hadn’t been told he was eligible weeks ago it wouldn’t be so bad – that’s the annoying part.
“The horse is not a great traveller so I sent him over to a friend of mine in Ireland a week early so he had time to settle in.
“It cost us £2,000 in transport costs to get him there because I wanted to send him alone.
“The entries closed at 12 and I got a phone call an hour earlier telling me that I was not eligible to enter him.
“We’d booked flights and arranged everything – it’s probably cost us nearly £4,000 with everything booked.”
