Grand National News

I have always admired Josh Gifford’s achievements as both a jockey (four times champion) and a trainer (fabled for his amazing 1981 Grand National triumph with Aldaniti under Bob Champion).  What is more, he achieved this success with great integrity and remained a modest and down to earth man to the end.  His death, in the early hours of Thursday morning is a sad loss to the racing industry and our thoughts are with his family at this time.

We had sad news of our own on Saturday morning when promising hurdler Bobby Ewing collapsed and died on the gallops at Pond House.  He had shown top class form when slamming Menorah by ten lengths at Doncaster in 2009 and we subsequently bought him from the sales in 2010 with a leg injury.  His owners had shown great patience to give him the time necessary to make a full recovery and we had been very pleased with him as he continued his progress back towards his racecourse reappearance.  The world really was his oyster and sadly we will never get to see just how good he could have been.

It was very disappointing to see Newbury’s card abandoned on Saturday – it had looked to be an excellent day’s racing although organisers should be applauded for getting the meeting rescheduled for this Friday.   However, I cannot hide my frustration…the whole card has been rescheduled, with the exception of the three mile novices’ chase in which we had Grands Crus (pictured left).  I cannot for the life of me see the sense in rescheduling a meeting and excluding one race!  Consequently, we will now wait and go straight to the Cheltenham Festival in March.  We had hoped to get another run into him for experience, but he will get plenty of practice at home between now and then.  I know that everyone is wanting to know which race he will be targeted at, but I can honestly say that as yet it is undecided.  There are still four weeks to go until the Festival and plenty can happen in that time – needless to say, we will give the matter plenty of careful consideration and you can rest assured that we will make the decision that we feel is right for him.

I thought that we had escaped most of the winter with a relatively unaffected race schedule; however the recent cold spell has certainly wreaked havoc.  At least we have had some racing on in Scotland and we head up north to Ayr tomorrow (where they are not anticipating any problems) with The Tracey Shuffle, who takes part in the maiden hurdle.  Owner Jo and Sean Tracey are quite local to the track, so it will be nice for them to have runners close to home.

I will not be attending the meeting at Ayr as I will be in London for the announcement of the Grand National weights at the Savoy Hotel.  We won the race in 2008 with Comply Or Die (who finished a brave second twelve months later), and we have four entries in Aintree’s blue ribband event this time around.  They are Royal Ascot and Cheltenham Festival winner Junior (pictured right), Massini’s Maguire, Swing Bill and The Package.  For the latest news and reaction to what weight our entries receive as well as news of the topweights, please check out Chester’s Chat tomorrow (Tuesday) from 11.30am.

David gives Mike Vince his reaction to the Grand National weights

Grand National weights - Audio mp3 - Interview

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