BARBURY Castle trainer Alan King was in confident mood after seeing his Hennessy Gold Cup pair Smad Place and Midnight Prayer work out at Newbury this morning ahead of the bet365 Hennessy Festival 

The duo are 10/1 and 20/1 respectively in the betting for Saturday's big race and King said: “I’m very happy with both horses. It’s good to get them out and have a change of scenery – they haven’t seen a racecourse since Cheltenham in March.

"You could see Midnight Prayer definitely had the adrenaline coming out of his box.

“It wasn’t serious work, but they both enjoyed it. It gets the nerves and the adrenaline up, they can experience the atmosphere of a racecourse when they come off the back of the horse box. They just cantered quickly down the back, breezed along – neither had a hard blow, they just did enough.

“I always thought Midnight Prayer was a decent staying chaser, one or two people thought he was lucky to win at Cheltenham, but that’s probably not fair.

“I’m not worried about coming back just for the Hennessy, there are not many options for him.

“Off a mark of 155, he (Smad Place) should go well. Wayne (Hutchinson) will probably ride. He did everything at the Cheltenham Festival, bar win. I thought he would win coming to the last.

“But he’s strengthened up now. He was always quite narrow, but he looks stronger and is working better. There’s more improvement to come. Hopefully, he might be a Gold Cup horse and if he is to be he should run a massive race off this mark.”