Racing: Phillips charmed by La Landiere

La Landiere is favourite for the Racing Post Chase at Kempton on Saturday and also a favourite with her trainer, Richard Phillips. Indeed, if the mare stretches her winning sequence to six at Sunbury at the weekend he may be down on bended knee.

"She's pretty laid back with a great temperament and she is so good at jumping," the Gloucestershire trainer said yesterday. "I wouldn't mind marrying her. I've not met many women that behave like that."

A further achievement of La Landiere's is that she has enabled Phillips to become the first dual winner of the Royal & SunAlliance novice chaser monthly award, an honour given in association with The Independent, a prize he took last April with Dark 'N Sharp.

La Landiere will have to continue her improvement at Kempton to cover the 12lb extra she has been allotted in the weights, but Coral, who quote 5-1, think the eight-year-old is up to it. It will be the mare's first expedition over three miles. "The trip is an unknown factor but she has a style of running which suggests she will get it," Phillips says. "She's taken well to fences but this is going to be a step up again because the competition is going to be stiff. Hopefully she will be up to running a huge one."

Now officially the second best of her sex in training after Lady Cricket, La Landiere is also ante-post favourite for the Mildmay Of Flete at the Cheltenham Festival, where her trainer is still stalking his debut winner. She is also entered in the Cathcart Chase, and also a valuable mares' final at Uttoxeter.

A busy spring looks assured. "She'd have a great chance at Uttoxeter and it's an option for us but, in terms of prestige, Cheltenham offers more," Phillips said. "Asking her to do the two would be tough but I wouldn't rule it out."

The mare will not fail for lack of company to the racecourse at the foot of Cleeve Hill. Phillips, who won the lunchtime Attheraces contest with Central Committee at Fontwell yesterday, is not just turning up at Prestbury Park for the tailgating and the hampers. "Realistically we have two other major chances at Cheltenham," he said. "We've got Chopneyev, who would go for the Pertemps Final as long as the ground had a bit of give in it. Three miles will suit him and he came up against a well handicapped horse [Martin Pipe's Korelo at Ascot] on Saturday. He's very tough and genuine and I'd like to think he'd have a chance in a race like that.

"Then we've got Dark 'N Sharp, who is about favourite for the Grand Annual. He's still in the Queen Mother Champion Chase but the other race looks the realistic option."

It is about time for Richard Phillips to put down a lasting mark in the National Hunt game. There have been sporadic successes in between the engagements for his mimicry talents, but now, as Mike Yarwood used to say, we are seeing the real him. Much of it has to do with the secure location of his Adlestrop stables, formerly the seat of Mark Todd, the double Olympic three-day event winner. Phillips has changed training base too often.

"Adlestrop is very idyllic, a typical Cotswolds village," the trainer said. "With any luck I hope to spend the days to my retirement there with a few big victories along the way." Then, at the end, he will be able to look back to where it all started.

"Your first Festival is like your first Holy Communion," he said. "Ever since I was a boy of five it has been my ambition to have a Festival winner so it's nice to go there with some horses that have a realistic chance. Even as a kid I wanted to be a trainer. I just knew I wanted to be a trainer. In fact I still want to be a trainer one day."

Secondary school for the boy Phillips was in Leatherhead and a comprehensive, to date not a notable fountain source for the nation's training brethren. Phillips did not prove to be a Rhodes scholar. "It would be fair to say I wasn't an outstanding pupil, mainly due to the fact that there weren't any O-levels in racing form," he says. "My idea of an A-level in Classics was rather different from theirs."

Yet there was early evidence that he could appeal to broad constituencies, that he could popularise himself. Master Phillips became the head boy. "I was very lucky because I went to a type of school that not many other trainers go to," he says. "It was mixed for a start and some of the people were the brightest in God's creation and some were stupid. You had to be fairly streetwise to get along.

"My best friend is a public schoolboy, but there are people from that background who seem to spend the time between 20 and 30 being teenagers."

Richard Phillips himself has done his growing up. Now he hopes La Landiere and her stablemates will confirm the maturity of his operation, first on Saturday and then at the greatest proving ground of them all.