- Monday, 10 June 2013 15:49
- Written by David Pipe
I was pleased to keep up our recent run of excellent weekend form with an across the card double at Perth and Nottingham on Sunday. Problema Tic made the 900+ mile round trip to the Scottish track worthwhile as he returned to form to run out the ready winner of the ultra competitive Perth Gold Cup under Tom Scudamore.
We had previously won the race in 2006 with Tamarinbleu who went on to enjoy Grade One success over fences; so hopefully this is a good omen for the future!
Street Entertainer (pictured right), a rare runner on the level for the stable, had earlier initiated the double with success on his first flat outing since 2010 at Nottingham. In the intervening three years he has turned into a classy handicap hurdler and a flat rating of 65 looked reasonable enough. Held up under jockey Neil Callan, he made relentless progress to lead over a furlong out before drawing right away to score in good style. We will look to find him another similar opportunity over the coming days where he can run under a penalty before the assessor can have his say.
Those who went racing may have spotted some unfamiliar faces with our runners, rather than those weathered features of travelling head lads Bob Hodge and Craig Wylie! Both Bob and Craig are on their annual pilgrimage up to Hawick at present and things there are likely to get very messy. In their absence Jemma Clark was responsible for our Nottingham runner, while young Mathilde Bouillon accompanied Problema Tic (pictured left) to Perth – both of them did a fantastic job and we are very grateful for their assistance.
While we are on the subject of the flat, we are likely to have a runner on York’s Knavesmire on Saturday as War Singer is an intended runner in the Queen Mother Cup for lady amateur jockeys. The winner of the legends race at Aintree on Grand National day, War Singer boasted some decent form in France and posted some good efforts on the level last term. He is the intended mount of Jane Mangan who was successful aboard the stable’s The Liquidator in the Grade One Champion Irish Bumper at Punchestown at the end of April.
My father won the race in 1996 with subsequent Champion Hurdle winner Make A Stand and it would certainly be nice if we could follow in his footsteps.
We will probably also have further runners on the flat next week when the Royal meeting at Ascot gets underway on Tuesday 18th June. We won the Ascot Stakes in 2010 with Junior and he will aim to repeat that success next week. He could well be joined by Beyond.
Royal Ascot is always a wonderful occasion and I will be up there for the first three days. For the last couple of years I have been fortunate enough to see Frankel perform a demolition job on his rivals, and while Sir Henry Cecil’s superstar may have been retired to stud there are plenty of other top class performers on show throughout the course of the week…I cannot wait!
It looks like being a quiet weekend of jumping, with only Hexham taking place on Saturday, while there are no jumps fixtures at all on Sunday. We will have a few runners in the interim, having made entries at Worcester, Uttoxeter and Aintree for the week ahead.
On Saturday night I will be attending a ‘Night Of Fun For JT’ at Cheltenham. It is an event that has been put on to raise funds for JT McNamara following his terrible fall at this year’s Cheltenham Festival in which he sustained life altering injuries. Many of the racing fraternity will be supporting the evening and there are some amazing auction lots up for grabs to the successful bidders, so hopefully they will raise plenty of money to support JT and his family. These jockeys quite literally risk their lives every time they get on a racehorse for our entertainment, so this is a good opportunity to give a little back.
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