Joncol into 5/1 for Ryanair Chase

Paul Nolan hopes Joncol can develop into a genuine contender for next year’s Gold Cup after seeing his Cheltenham odds fall following a heroic display at Leopardstown on Sunday.

The giant seven-year-old got the better of Cooldine and Schindlers Hunt in a titanic battle for Ireland’s premier chasing prize, the Hennessy Gold Cup, providing both Nolan and jockey Alain Cawley with the biggest win of their careers.

Without an entry for the Cheltenham Gold Cup, Nolan is leaning towards skipping the Ryanair Chase, for which Joncol is priced at (5/1), in favour of the Guinness Gold Cup at the Punchestown Festival.

“It’s nice to win those big ones and it lifts the whole place,” said Nolan.

“I was delighted for young Alain as well and the owners have been great supporters. They’ve also got a half-brother and a half-sister in the yard.

“He won a point-to-point as a four-year-old, his bumper as a five-year-old and went straight over fences. He’s relatively inexperienced and his professionalism is improving every day.

“Hopefully he’ll improve well enough to be a contender for next year’s Gold Cup, if he improves enough.

“He put the stamina issue to bed yesterday and he even jumped out to the right at the last. If we can iron out those issues and get him more battle hardened, there is improvement there – whether there’s enough we won’t know until the day.It would be very hard to have him peaking for the Ryanair. We’ve run well every race this season and we might need to freshen him up now and give it a miss and wait for the Gold Cup at Punchestown if the ground was safe enough.

That’s definitely on our mind but we’ll sit down with the owners and have a chat. We’ll have to make up our minds very shortly because the most he can have off is a week if we still had Cheltenham in mind. He’s 100% this morning, there’s not a blemish on him.”