Clan Des Obeaux on course to defend Aintree title

Dual King George hero ‘coming on beautifully’ after lengthy absence.

Dual King George winner Clan Des Obeaux is making good progress from a suspensory tendon injury, leaving trainer Paul Nicholls “very pleased” as he builds up to a return at Aintree’s Grand National meeting.

The 11-year-old, owned by Paul Barber, Ged Mason and Sir Alex Ferguson, is being aimed at the Betway Bowl on April 13.

The five-time Grade One winner was last seen finishing second to Allaho in the Punchestown Gold Cup in April.

Nicholls is expected to give him a racecourse gallop ahead of his return, providing the ground eases sufficiently.

He said: “Clan Des Obeaux has been coming on beautifully. He has been doing a lot of work and the plan is to go straight to Aintree.

“I’m very pleased with him. It was touch and go at Christmas as to whether we’d carry on, but he’s done a lot of work and he’s been fine.

“He has improved enormously. We are not wrapping him in cotton wool – he has got to be ready.

“He’d have run at Newbury, but he skipped that and he will go to Wincanton one day on some good ground. It has been so fast.

“We will get a nice gallop into him and then go to Aintree.”

Clan Des Obeaux will bid to add to his haul of over GBP 1million in prize-money in the Grade One race he won in 2021 and 2022.

Nicholls added: “We are going to have a huge team at Aintree. It is just the way it works out with some of the horses we’ve got.

“And I love Aintree as much as I love Cheltenham – it is a great meeting. It is not ducking and diving from Cheltenham – if we have horses good enough, we’ll be there. It will be the same with Aintree.”

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