WYE Valley Grand National-winning trainer Venetia Williams heads for this week’s Cheltenham Festival with L'Homme Presse entered in Friday’s Gold Cup and four other hopes.

Fourth in the 2024 Gold Cup after being bumped and injured when leading two from home, the 11-year-old stable star has fought back from another injury to land three successive seconds – runner-up at Cheltenham in December on his first outing for 300 days, before chasing home Spillane’s Tower and Haiti Couleurs in the Cotswold Chase and Denman Chase respectively.

The King’s Caple trainer, who also has the horse entered in next month's Grand National at Aintree, said : “He has come out of Newbury (Denman Chase) well. The handicapper left him alone and put Haiti up and took a view on the run, so it will be interesting to see what weight he gets in the Grand National.

“All being well he‘ll now go to the Gold Cup and then on to Aintree. He can still run well in a Gold Cup; Mon Mome finished third after winning his National (2009) and he never achieved the ratings L’Homme Presse has... if he ran into a place we’d be delighted.”

Williams has four other entries, with Jungle Boogie due to race today (Tuesday) in the Sun Plate, Martator in the Johnny Henderson (Wednesday) and Chavez and Hunter Legend in the Fulke Walwyn Kim Muir (Thursday).

Meanwhile, Abergavenny 2008 Gold Cup-winning jockey-turned-trainer Sam Thomas has four contenders at Cheltenham, starting today with Steel Ally in the Arkle Trophy.

Day three (Thursday) sees C’Est Different line up for the Pertemps Final, having won his last four races, while Celtic Dino will go in the County Hurdle and Whiskey Yankee in the Albert Bartlett Novices Hurdle on Friday.

Celtic Dino beat Champion Hurdle contender Alexei in the Welsh Champion Hurdle in the autumn and chased home star mare Wodhooh at Ascot before finishing fourth in the Christmas Hurdle at Kempton.