The Reverend’s jumping career is on hold after the setback which saw him ruled out of the Cheltenham Festival, with connections now eyeing a shot at the Ebor back on the Flat later in the summer.
A highly-talented four-time winner on the level for William Haggas, the five-year-old subsequently joined Willie Mullins and made an excellent start over obstacles when winning on his hurdling bow at Cork in December.
Only one more outing over obstacles would follow when unseating Harry Cobden in a Grade One at the Dublin Racing Festival and having sat out the action at Prestbury Park last month, he remains sidelined.
“The week before Cheltenham he did a small, hairline fracture on the right hand side of his pelvis and he was slightly lame,” said Sean Graham, racing manager for owner Tony Bloom, who owns the horse with Ian McAleavy.
“He’s had three weeks of box rest already and he’ll have another two weeks’ box rest, then it will be three or four weeks on the walker, before coming back into training again so it was just a setback and one of those things.
“With a horse like him, because there is the prospect of running on the Flat, we didn’t want to take any risk whatsoever, so, we’ll just take a back seat with the jumping at the minute.
“The obvious race for him would be the Ebor and we’ll just have to see if we can get a race into him beforehand.
“I don’t know whether he’ll be ready and back in time to be at Royal Ascot, but if he was he could run in the mile and six or the mile and a half handicap there, or there will be plenty of time to find something else.”
Lake Forest is another quality Flat performer for Bloom and McAleavy trained by Haggas.
The five-year-old was beaten just half a length by Never So Brave in the Group One City of York Stakes last summer and while he subsequently finished well held in a couple of top-level events in Australia, he has since been gelded.
Graham added: “Lake Forest has been gelded and the plan is to run him over seven furlongs at Haydock (Pertemps Network Spring Trophy Stakes, May 9) first time out.
“I think that’s about three weeks or four weeks before Epsom where we’ll run him on Derby day in the new seven-furlong race there (Betfred Tattenham Corner Stakes, June 6) and then we’ll go for the first race on the Tuesday at Royal Ascot like we did last year (Queen Anne Stakes).
“Last year we took him to France for his prep run before Ascot and it didn’t really work out because we got very soft ground that day and it was a slowly-run race that didn’t suit him. For this year we’d probably prefer to keep him in this country for his couple of prep runs before Ascot.”
