Team Tizzard are planning another big Saturday assault with the yard’s leading novice from last season, Fiddlerontheroof, spearheading a trio of the runners in the Ladbrokes Trophy Chase at Newbury.
Having landed the historic handicap twice in the last five years, with subsequent Gold Cup winner Native River in 2016 and Sizing Tennessee two years later, the Dorset yard will play another strong hand in the three-and-a-quarter-mile Grade Three showpiece, worth GBP142,375 to the winner.
Mister Malarky and Copperhead complete the three-pronged attack, with assistant trainer Joe Tizzard hopeful Fiddlerontheroof can maintain his progression and go right to the top of the chasing tree.
Last season’s Brown Advisory Novices’ Chase second, a Grade One-winning novice hurdler, produced a perfect start to his campaign with an impressive success in the Listed Colin Parker Memorial Intermediate Chase at Carlisle.
Tizzard – who was at Ascot on Saturday to see Lostintranslation return to top form in the 1965 Chase – confirmed: “It is a prestigious race that we target and we are probably going to run three in the Ladbrokes Trophy – Fiddlerontheroof, Copperhead and Mister Malarky.
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“Fiddler obviously put in a lovely performance at Carlisle and has a run under his belt and ticks a lot of the boxes. It was good to see him stick on so well at Carlisle.
“He’s a second-season novice, who was ultra-consistent throughout the whole of last year, taking on the best novices in England, and didn’t do a lot wrong.
“Off his current mark, you would have to hope he would be competitive. This race suits second-season novices as well.”
Mister Malarky and Copperhead, winner of three of his six chases, are no slouches either, having respectively landed the Grade Two Sodexo Reynoldstown Novices’ Chase at Ascot in 2019 and 2020.
Tizzard added: “Mister Malarky has had two runs this season. He was a bit disappointing on his first, but he takes a couple of runs to get sharp and while this is chucking him in at the deep end, he is a good horse when it all clicks for him – you wouldn’t necessarily know when that is going to be.
“But on a going day has plenty of talent and he wouldn’t mind a bit of decent ground if it stays dry all week.”