Thistlecrack strike again with another Grade 1 win at Aintree.
Another successful Festival meeting for Kayf Tara saw the outstanding Thistlecrack win his third Grade 1 event of the season with victory in the Liverpool Stayers’ Hurdle at Aintree on Grand National day.
John and Heather Snook’s eight-year-old may not be finished yet as trainer Colin Tizzard has indicated he may well round off his first-class season at Punchestown. Now the winner of £460,000 in prize-money, Thistlecrack has won nine of his 14 races and is the second-highest earning jumper in Britain this season behind only the Crabbie’s Grand National winner Rule The World. With a RPR of 178, he is the top-rated hurdler in training.
Thistlecrack wasn’t the only star at Aintree for Kayf Tara, however, as the young mare Kayf Grace posted a battling performance in the Grade 2 Goffs Nickel Coin Mares’ Bumper for Nicky Henderson.
James and Jean Potter’s homebred six-year-old is out of Potter’s Gale, a half-sister to the top-class chaser Denman, and has now won her last two bumper starts after and extraordinarily easy 53-length victory at Fakenham on 28 March.
Kayf Tara has now sired 102 individual winners of 157 races this season at a strike-rate of 34 per cent. His progeny have earned £2,191,191 to put him in third place in the sires’ table for Britain and Ireland.
