- Monday, 24 August 2015 15:32
- Written by David Pipe
Despite only a handful of runners, the stable continued in good form with Purple ‘N Gold making a winning chasing debut at Worcester on Sunday and Standing Ovation landing Newton Abbot’s feature race, the Listed Lord Mildmay Chase that I had won in previous years with Star Of Germany and Shoegazer. Those two successes took us to eighteen wins for the current campaign and propelled us back up into second place in the trainers’ standings.
Standing Ovation has long been a great favourite here at Pond House so it was great that he was able to land another nice prize by taking the Mildmay Chase at Newton Abbot on Saturday. With his stamina assured and a nice, low weight on his back Tom Scudamore made it a real test once taking up the running on our tough as teak eight year old and he battled on well to the line to score by a hard fought length. Until landing a relatively uncompetitive novices’ hurdle at Market Rasen just over a week ago (a good piece of placement by the trainer if I do say so myself!) Standing Ovation had last been successful in the Badger Ales Chase at Wincanton in November 2013. He has endured his share of bad luck in the meantime as demonstrated by unfortunate falls at Cheltenham in December and another at Aintree’s Grand National meeting but he has also run creditably in a number of the top handicaps, twice finishing in the prize money at the Cheltenham Festival (in the Bayliss & Harding and Kim Muir Chases) as well as finishing a good second at Cheltenham first meeting of the season last October so this was a well-deserved, if somewhat overdue success.
Standing Ovation is owned by the Bravo Partnership who run their horses in the colours of the late and very much missed David Johnson who was one of the original members and it is always special to see those famous colours carried to victory. While it is not difficult to imagine him ending up back at Wincanton in November to try to regain his Badger Ales trophy, ‘Stan’ will be kept on the go whilst in such good form, mixing hurdling and chasing.
While I was at Newton Abbot I dropped in on the Cornish Racing Club who take a private box at this fixture every year. They are an group of racing enthusiasts who love their National Hunt racing and I have been dropping in to mark their cards for the last few years – you would think they would have learned by now! I did actually tip them a winner this time in the form of Standing Ovation so I will be expecting another invitation for 2016!
Onto Sunday and it was the turn of Purple ‘N Gold to score for the Pond House team with success in the novices’ chase at Worcester under Tom Scudamore. He had pleased me with his schooling over the larger obstacles at home, although I was a little concerned after the rain had come at Worcester to make the ground good/soft (and softening by the minute). Even so, he put up a good performance to beat the John Ferguson trained Broughton, battling on bravely to win by 1¼ lengths. He has proven to be a real money-spinner since joining us from an all-weather claimer for £8,000, winning on the flat, over hurdles and now fences – he rarely runs a bad race and I would love a few more like him. It just goes to show that you do not have to spend a king’s ransom to have a horse in training – we have a proven track record of finding the right horse for the right sort of money, so if you would like to join the ranks of owner at Pond House, do get in touch and I would be delighted to have an informal chat to discuss your requirements.
There were a number of other good performances last week with Junior Package, Epic Warrior, Perspicace and My Brother Sylvest all reaching the frame although both Perspicace and My Brother Sylvest looks as though they could do with a little bit of respite from the handicapper.
Speaking of which, I am eagerly anticipating tomorrow’s ratings changes as I am fascinated to know what the handicapper is going to do with recent Fontwell scorer For ‘N’ Against. You may recall that he won a very uncompetitive race in good style from a mark of 109, so you can imagine my amazement when he was raised a whopping 16lbs by the assessor. For ‘N’ Against turned out again under a 7lbs penalty a week later at Worcester and while he ran creditably to finish fourth, there were no obvious excuses for him and he will struggle from his new mark of 125 which is effectively another 9lbs higher…the handicapper has told me that he will take a second look!
Onto this week and it looks like it is going to be a quiet week on the jumping front with only a handful of entries, although we will have a few runners on the level. Today (Monday) we run Race To Glory (Jamie Spencer) at Leicester and Impulsive American (Shane Gray) at Carlisle, while tomorrow ex-French recruit Honeymoon Cocktail makes his first start for us at Newbury and he will be partnered by Mikey Ennis.
With no jumping taking place today or Wednesday and the stable having no runners at Fontwell tomorrow, the next National Hunt runners will not come until at least Thursday where we have Low Key and Vayland entered at Sedgefield. Low Key has a further entry at Stratford on the same day along with Sunday’s chase winner Purple ‘N’ Gold and Spending Time. With the recent downpours we will wait until nearer the time to check the ground and likely opponents before finalising running plans. As ever, Chester will give all the latest news on runners in his daily chat or you can follow us on Twitter @DavidPipeRacing
Finally, we have a special guest riding out for us this week…leading Irish trainer Gordon Elliott has sent his sixteen year old conditional jockey Jack Kennedy across the Irish Sea for a bit of experience with us at Pond House. En route he very nearly landed the Ebor on Saturday when he finished runner-up on the Willie Mullins trained Wicklow Brave! Clearly a very talented young jockey, it is good to have him aboard and I am sure we will be hearing plenty more of him in the future.
