Robbie Power On The Gold Cup: “If This Horse Turns Up, He’ll Take A Lot Of Beating”

With just eight days to go until the showpiece of the Cheltenham Festival, the Gold Cup, the talk of the town, or the preview nights to be specific, has been surrounding the jewel in the crown of National Hunt racing. The majority of this talk has surrounded the likes of Santini, Delta Work and last year’s winner, Al Boum Photo.

On a Boylesports Preview evening on Tuesday hosted by Ruby Walsh, Robbie Power was extremely bullish on the chances of perhaps the forgotten horse at the front of the market, Lostintranslation of Colin Tizzard. When asked about the “speed bump” of Kempton and the King George by Walsh, Power was very quick to play down the importance of that Kempton performance.

Power began his retort by stating: “Yeah he has (referring to the Kempton “speed bump”) but he’s an animal, they have off-days. He had been to Carlisle, won impressively, been to Haydock, won impressively”.

Lostintranslation’s jumping was his key asset in those fantastic victories, and that part of his arsenal wasn’t functional in the King George, as Power would go on to state: “Three weeks later, (he) turned up in the King George and bombed out. He was flat as a pancake, I could have pulled him up after jumping two fences. His big forte is his jumping, he didn’t even jump a fence that day”.

Moving away from Kempton and looking ahead to Cheltenham, Power was bullish on the chances of his mount in the Gold Cup, continuing to say that: “He’s had a little wind operation, he’s been freshened up. His form around the new course in Cheltenham is exceptional”.

“I wouldn’t swap Lostintranslation for anything else in the race, if he turns up like he did in Haydock or Cheltenham last year, he’ll take a lot of beating”.