Nigel Twiston-Davies says Imperial Commander 50-50 to make King George

Nigel Twiston-Davies sits hunched in the corner of a sofa in his office, alternately sighing and grimacing as he considers the health of his best horse. He does not look like a man newly returned to the top of his profession, thanks to victories in both of the weekend's major races, but a trivial injury sustained by Imperial Commander in winning the Betfair Chase threatens to prevent his trainer from making a point that he sorely wants to prove. The horse has been well beaten twice in the King George at Kempton on Boxing Day, leading most pundits to conclude that the race simply does not suit. Twiston-Davies believes the pundits are deluded but the point may be moot, as Imperial Commander struck into his near-fore in mid-race, sustaining a cut that means he is now confined to his box here, a dozen miles east of Cheltenham. "It just depends how quickly it heals," says the trainer. "Hopefully, in a week's time, it'll be all right. There's nothing you can do, just keep it clean and give him antibiotics." If the cut has closed up in a week, Twiston-Davies feels sure he will have enough time to bring Imperial Commander to his peak before facing Kauto Star at Kempton. If not, his horse will skip the race. "It's 50-50," the trainer says. "It's very annoying, we want to prove a lot of people wrong," he adds, explaining that Imperial Commander returned from the 2008 King George "with muck on his lungs and couldn't possibly have won". Last year, his chance was lost by an early blunder after two rivals "closed in front of him and he didn't see the fence. It wasn't his fault at all but people are so blinkered, they don't look at the facts." No less upsetting for Twiston-Davies is the suggestion that his stable's form usually slumps in December. While he does not deny a low strike-rate for the month in recent seasons (7% over four years), he insists that the reason has nothing to do with the health of his charges. "Again, it's pure stupidity. We start earlier than everyone else. The horses, by this time, they've been thrown up the weights. You can't keep on producing miracles. It's not that the form goes, it's just that the animals have all won." Unlike most of his stablemates, Imperial Commander has been trained to reach his peak in late December and the trainer plans for him to be fitter than he was on Saturday. "Ignorance annoys me, stupidity really. So I'm just so desperate he does get there this year." Another misconception he is keen to bury is the suggestion of tension in his relationship with stable jockey Paddy Brennan, supposedly caused by the fact that the trainer's son, Sam, an extremely promising rider, now gets to partner some of the yard's best horses. "We get on very well together," Twiston-Davies says. "There's an awful lot of racing at the weekend. We need two good jockeys and always will do." The trainer is proud that, for the third November in succession, he is at the top of the trainer's table of prize-money earnings but it would be "an impossibility" for him to hang on until the season ends in April. "Paul Nicholls and Nicky Henderson, they have 200 horses, 150, we're never going to have that. Basically, we have 100 and that's our sort of number. We've never had a £200,000 horse. "Of course, everybody wants to win it but, being particularly realistic, we never can. We're not going to get those sort of owners, we're not going to get those sort of numbers." But if he can win the King George and, through Khyber Kim, the Christmas Hurdle, he may still be at or near the top of the table when the Cheltenham Festival comes round in March. Initially dismissive of the idea, Twiston-Davies is persuaded to consider it. "Well . . . yeah, could be, could be," he says eventually, his eyebrows rising. Then his face clouds over and another sigh wells up. "The annoying thing is this bloody cut."