The Festival is off Route's new agenda

Lydia Hislop13 April 2012

The one familiar face missing from tomorrow's line-up for the Tingle Creek Trophy is Direct Route, battlehardened veteran of many a exhilarating duel with Edredon Bleu, ante-post favourite for Sandown's Grade One event.

Punters are even advised to hold all bets on him to win next March's Queen Mother Champion Chase. Bookmaker William Hill rates him 12-1 fifth favourite to go one better than when beaten a mere short head by Edredon Bleu in the thrilling 2000 Cheltenham Festival's two-mile championship event.

But Direct Route's Co. Durham trainer, Howard Johnson, is intent on a light campaign for the ten-year-old gelding and warned that - although he would be entered in the Champion Chase, his main target for the past three years - it is "probably not" on this season ' s agenda.

Instead, Johnson plans to start winding him up in January and perhaps run no more than three times. His main targets will be a third win in Aintree's Melling Chase in April and a trip to the Punchestown Festival the following month for the Grade One BMW Chase, in which he was third to Celibate in 1999.

"Aintree and Punchestown are the main targets this time - Direct Route is getting on a bit now and has to have good ground or else it's not worth running him. I'll have a look at the Cheltenham race if the ground is right, but he's been beaten in it twice before," said Johnson.

"It was always the plan not to start him this season until the Spring. We'll get going in January and he may only have three runs. He's well enough in himself and still young enough to make a mark at the top level."

This year will be the first time Direct Route has missed Sandown's Tingle Creek day, or its equivalent, in his entire chasing career.

He won the supporting 1997 Henry VIII Chase over the same course-and-distance as a novice and beat Edredon Bleu in the Mitsubishi Shogun-sponsored main event the following year.

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in