Under Starters Orders!

I hope you will excuse me if this weeks’ blog is slightly shorter than usual, as I am sure you can understand with the Festival now only 24 hours away I have many things to oversee and arrangements to make.

Tomorrow marks the beginning of the best four days of jump racing in the world and we will be represented by three runners.   Great Endeavour goes in the Stewart Family Handicap Chase, Dan Breen in the Arkle and Swing Bill in the Centenary Novices’ Handicap Chase. Timmy Murphy will partner the David Johnson owned pair, while Tom Scu gets the leg-up in the Arkle.

I will be going up and back everyday and will have a hectic schedule. Not only will I be overseeing the welfare of the horses before and after racing, I will be hosting over 100 people in our marquee, conducting race previews there and in other hospitality units, not to mention taking care of the horses at the races!

Hopes are high and we will be keeping our fingers firmly crossed over the four days. Last year we had a couple of winners (as well as a couple more that were only narrowly touched off) and it would be nice to do the same this year, although one winner would be nice! The most important thing of course though, is that all of the horses come back safe and sound.

I am pleased to say that the horses are in good order going into the Festival and Danny Cook has done well filling in for Tom Scudamore during his brief spell on the sidelines. Indeed, Danny produced a lovely ride to coax the enigmatic Choumakeur to victory at Wincanton on Friday, before winning aboard Chester Cup victor Mamlook at Sandown on Saturday. I was particularly pleased with Mamlook’s success – he has always been a high class horse, and Saturday was the first time that he has had his ground this season. He will bypass the Festival but could be just the type to go to Aintree.

Mamlook wins at Sandown on Saturday under Danny Cook

I hope that you have enjoyed our series of interviews with our team of jockey’s over the last week, but if you did miss them, you can always check them out in our media vault. I would like to thank Mike Vince for his eloquent skills and for giving of his time to conduct the interviews and provide them for use on our website. I am sure that there will be more videos and interviews online over the next few days, so remember to keep up to date with our daily news in Chester’s Chat.