- Monday, 10 October 2016 14:53
- Written by David Pipe
It is good to have the jump racing starting in earnest now and as soon as we have a bit of rain, we will have the winter horses for the forthcoming season ready to go. The trouble, as has been the case many times of late is that October is turning into an increasingly dry month. With the changing profile of the type of horse in training at Pond House over the years we are now reliant on a bit of rain to soften the ground. I may sound like a bit of a killjoy but I for one certainly wouldn’t mind the heavens opening for a day or two!
Consequently, it was a quiet week with just four runners over the sticks and a couple in the Cesarewitch handicap on the level at Newmarket on Saturday. The jumpers performed with credit, especially Daklondike who posted a promising effort at Hereford on Thursday when third in a decent looking novices’ hurdle. A half-brother to my Paddy Power Gold Cup and Cheltenham Festival winner Great Endeavour, our Irish point winner already looks as though he will benefit from a step-up in trip and should be winning races before too long.
I was disappointed not to have fared better in the Cesarewitch at Newmarket on Saturday with Starchitect and Ennistown finishing out of the money. Of course, it is a fiercely competitive handicap but I thought our pair had decent claims. It certainly didn’t help when we lost the lottery (or should that be the draw?) beforehand – stalls 26 and 29 were not ideal and while Starchitect was able to break well and obtain a good position at the head of affairs, he may just have been doing too much in front under Jamie Spencer. Meanwhile, anything that could go wrong did go wrong for Ennistown who met trouble in running on a couple of occasions. I think a line can safely be drawn under this and both will resume over jumps on their next outings.
Looking to this week, the dry spell is due to continue until the weekend at the very least. Once again there are no jumps cards taking place today (Monday), while we have no entries tomorrow. Looking further ahead, the likes of Gabrial The Great, For ‘N’ Against and Skylander all have multiple entries over the coming few days and will be running very shortly.
It was good to see Andrew King (pictured above) here today - it is not very often I say that!. You may be aware that Andrew is the West Country correspondent for the Racing Post and he has taken over from the excellent Ben Newton as interviewer for the annual stable tour series which will be commencing shortly. Don’t forget to keep your eye out for the Pond House feature, I’m sure it will make for interesting reading.
Speaking of which, we still have some of our own exclusive ‘in-house’ Pond House brochures for the 2016/17 season still available – for more information on how to get hold of yours, please click here.
