Vautour brilliant winner of JLT Novices' Chase at Cheltenham

Vautour was a brilliant winner of the JLT Novices' Chase for the all-conquering Willie Mullins-Ruby Walsh team.

The 6-4 favourite went to the front from the moment the tapes went up and by the third last had seen off Irish Saint who had tried to put the pressure on at the head of affairs.

At that stage eventual runner-up Apache Stronghold emerged as a potential threat but it was soon clear Walsh had matters in hand,

He finally let last year's Sky Bet Supreme Novices' winner down after turning for home and the response was electric.

A brilliant leap at the last sealed the victory and Vautour roared up the hill to score by 15 lengths with Apache Stronghold recovering from a mistake at the final fence to rally up the hill and deny the runner-up's stablemate Valseur Lido the forecast spot.

Sky Bet make the winner an 8-1 chance for next year's Betfred Cheltenham Gold Cup and 7-1 for the William Hill King George at Kempton.

Walsh said: "He wasn't right at Christmas, but from the first time we started schooling him I was taken with him. This lad has it all. He was going his own speed - I'm taken with him. There's some summer dreaming to be done with this one."

Owner Rich Ricci added: "I can't ever remember seeing a novice jump like that at Cheltenham. He's a different horse round here, for some reason. It was unbelievable, breathtaking, actually. We'll step up in distance next season and see where we go."

Mullins said: "I've loved this horse all the time, but I had to really work hard at him for the last three weeks.

"We were probably minding him too much earlier in the season. I thought the race was over turning for home, it was just a case of jumping, and he absolutely flew over the last two."

The trainer, bagging his sixth winner of the week, went on: "He was good the first day, but then things went wrong at Christmas. He won the last day and then I've been very hard on him to try and get him back in last year's form. He's just turned a corner, but he needed all that hard work.

"We've managed to keep the good horses apart this year, we might come to England a bit more and France.

"Dermot, who looks after Vautour, is a fluent Japanese speaker and went over there with Blackstairmountain so we may even look at that again, that's another option."

Mullins confirmed he sees his star as a horse for the blue riband.

He said: "He's that good (Gold Cup), he was like the one yesterday (Don Poli, winner of RSA Chase), but I think he'll stay, we're definitely going down the Gold Cup route.

"You need plenty, it's hard to get chasers to that standard every year. You hope you might get one Gold Cup horse out of 100 horses.

"When you get one near that mark you go for it. He's strong enough for soft ground, but probably better ground suits him."

Walsh continued: "He jumped like a gazelle. He was flawless. He just ran them ragged."

Paul Nicholls was happy enough with the efforts of Irish Saint and Ptit Zig, but feels both will benefit from a step up in trip in due course.

He said: "They both really want three miles. We weren't going to come here with Irish Saint but we thought there's a month between now and Aintree and he will not go over three miles there.

"That was the fastest going Ptit Zig's run on, he was going OK until he made a mistake and that put him on the back foot."