Over the past 14 years, Fergal O’Brien has loaded 48 horses into a box for the short trip from his Gloucestershire yard to Cheltenham’s Festival meeting. Every time he has returned home empty-handed. Hope, though, springs eternal for one of the most engaging and popular trainers in the game and in Crambo, the narrow winner of the Grade One Long Walk Hurdle here on Saturday, he may yet prove to have found the horse to break his Festival duck.
Dysart Enos, a winner for the yard at Cheltenham this month, is the ante-post favourite for the Mares’ Novice Hurdle on the third afternoon in March, but Crambo is now a live contender for the Stayers’ Hurdle earlier the same day after edging out the veteran Paisley Park by a short head.
