GRAND National-winning trainer Venetia Williams heads for next week’s Cheltenham Festival with L'Homme Presse entered in the Gold Cup and a host of other hopes.

Fourth in the 2024 Gold Cup after being bumped when leading two from home, the 11-year-old stable star has fought back from 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.

"It would be nice to take him to Cheltenham again and if he ran into a place we’d be delighted.

“He would need to jump better than he did at Newbury, but there are times his mind is not quite on the jumping job and it was certainly like that in the Denman.

“On his day his jumping is great and you only have to go back to his previous run at Cheltenham when he was second in the Cotswold, he jumped superbly."

Williams has 10 entries in the Festival, including Funambule Sivola, Jungle Boogie and Martator in the Sun Plate, Green Book in the Pertemps Handicap Hurdle, and Chavez, Hunter Legend and Alcedo in the Fulke Walwyn Kim Muir, with the latter also down for the Ultima and Martator an alternative in the Johnny Henderson.