Lacey sweet on Becher bid for Kimberlite Candy

Aintree repeat for last year’s runner-up.

Tom Lacey has another Becher Chase bid in mind for last year’s runner-up Kimberlite Candy.

The eight-year-old finished two and a half lengths behind dual Becher hero Walk In The Mill in the three-and-a-quarter-mile contest 12 months ago.

Lacey is now planning to return to Aintree on December 5 to take on the same race over the National fences.

“He’ll go for the Becher Chase, he’s in great nick, we’re really pleased with him,” he said.

“I’d have to refresh my memory, I think he went up for winning the Classic Chase and then he got another 2lb when The Conditional won at the Festival. That leaves him several pounds higher than he was going into the Becher Chase last season.”

After his Becher performance and an emphatic win in the Grade Three Classic Chase at Warwick, Lacey’s charge looked like a Grand National contender before the meeting was cancelled due to the coronavirus outbreak.

Lacey has the marathon race pencilled in once again for the JP McManus-owned gelding, providing the Aintree going conditions are sufficiently soft.

“It would be the plan, but I think we’d be reliant on a wet spring,” he said.

“I think he would have run last year, it was drying up beforehand and the weather was just going against us initially, but they do a very good job of watering at Aintree.

“I think you see the best of him with some juice in the ground.”

Sebastopol (right) is heading for the Greatwood Hurdle
Sebastopol (right) is heading for the Greatwood Hurdle (Jeff Holmes/PA)

The Woolhope handler plans to give Scottish County Hurdle winner Sebastopol an outing in the Grade Three Unibet Greatwood Hurdle at Cheltenham on Sunday.

He said: “I’m very keen to have a go at the Greatwood with Sebastopol. If he is going to competitive this season, he has got to be in some of those decent handicap hurdles. He is immensely talented and I think ultimately we will end up going up in trip with him.

“A race like the Greatwood though, they will go flat out and it should be run to suit him.”

Stablemate Tea Clipper could bid to back up his Silver Trophy success from Chepstow at Cheltenham on Saturday.

Lacey added: “Tea Clipper could go to Cheltenham for the Listed hurdle there next weekend or we might wait for Haydock in what was the fixed brush hurdle. I was really pleased with the way he picked up again at Chepstow.

“His hurdling probably needs to be slicker as he spends a lot of time in the air at his hurdles.

“Had he not won the Silver Trophy, we would have probably campaigned him over fences, but as he has won that we ought to campaign him over hurdles.”

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