Paul Nicholls on his Chepstow runners: "My best chance of the weekend"

I’ve been at Ditcheat for 35 years and the Chepstow meeting has always been a good way to start the National Hunt Season. The meeting will be a little quieter this year because all the chases have been moved. We may take part in some of them next week. We haven’t rushed as much as we usually do to get ready for this meeting, because of the ground, so we have four horses, who won’t mind the better ground, to run this weekend. Hopefully over the next few weeks we will get some rain so we can get going properly.

We’re very happy with where we are and all our horses are unbeaten this season, haha, so that’s good, and we’re not in a hurry. We’ll be selective about when they run and start ramping things up over the next few weeks. November will probably be when we truly get ready. Some horses might need a run in October but, as I say, we are not in a hurry. 

He didn’t run too badly last season, but I thought he was slightly disappointing and I am hoping he has strengthened in the summer. He’s done plenty, looks fit and well. He needs to improve to win this race. If he doesn’t win soon, we will be looking for races for him around the smaller tracks. 

He’s ready and we will see how much he has improved for the summer off. He’s dropping back from two miles three to two miles and, ultimately, he will get a trip, but this is his first run of the season, it’s four-year-olds only and we’ve got to start somewhere. 

He’s one of my hurdlers to follow this season and, without a doubt, my best chance of the weekend. We like him a lot, he won his only bumper last season, who knows what he beat but I think the form was ok. We’ve done lots of work with him.

I was quite keen to run him in the Persian War but, when I saw the ratings of some of the others in the field, I thought we were better off starting in a maiden hurdle and we can go forward from here. I’m very much looking forward to him running.

He’s a nice young horse and is making his debut for the yard. He’s the first of the four-year-olds we’ve run this season, he’s by Maxios and from quite a nice family. He’s done everything nicely that we’ve asked of him. 

Dan Skelton has a nice point to point winner, who will probably be hard to beat, in the race. But we can’t wait to get Too Many Acres on the track and, like all my four-year-olds at this time of year, he will improve for the experience and the run.

Freddie Keighley takes off a valuable 5lb from Fasol today. He was always ridden by Olive Nicholls who was claiming and she won on him once or twice, and he ran some good races, including in the Lanzarote. If he runs to that standard at Chepstow on Friday, he will go well. 

He tends to need his first run of the season, as he did this time last year when he was favourite in the novice hurdle, but I have done a lot with him. He’s had an away day so I am hoping he will be thereabouts.