It was another good week for the stable with a couple of nice winners taking our tally for the season to 66, while stable jockey Tom Scudamore maintained his excellent form by notching his 88th win of the campaign. Of course the highlight for the Pond House team was the high profile success of exciting staying novice chaser Kings Palace at Cheltenham on Friday and he is certainly one that will keep me dreaming as Christmas fast approaches.

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What an eventful week it has been! A winner over the Grand National fences, a ride of the month contender from one of our conditional jockeys and the Pond House staff Christmas party to mention just a few of the highlights. With five winners on the week our seasonal tally stands at 64 successes and means the stable is still some two weeks ahead of schedule compared with our best previous season in terms of winners.

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I am pleased to report that as we enter the month of December the stable continues in good form, with five winners last week taking our tally to sixteen for November and fifty-nine for the season. If you had told me at the beginning of the season that I would be the leading trainer numerically at this time of year, I would have been very (pleasantly) surprised! With Tom Scudamore leading jockey at the Hennessy meeting at Newbury, there are plenty of reasons to be jolly as the Christmas season approaches!

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  Taj Badalandabad - Winner at Chepstow

 

We did not have that many runners during the week last week but a double at Chepstow on Thursday kept the winners tally ticking along.  Taj Badalandabad opened his account over hurdles at the second time of asking.  He finished fourth on his hurdling debut up at Wetherby in what looks to be working out as a pretty decent race and it was great to see him do the job nicely here.  He is still a bit novicey at some of his hurdles but he will improve with experience, he loves the soft ground and he should continue to provide us and owner William Frewen with some fun this winter.  Smiles For Miles was our other Chesptow winner and it was nice to finally get this one’s head in front, his first victory of any description.  The first time blinkers certainly seemed to do the trick and he travelled and jumped superbly, bar one mistake at the 4th last.  He galloped all the way to the line on what was very testing ground to score comfortably and with a hike in the weights on the cards he will be probably run again sometime this week under a penalty.  Providing the blinkers have the same effect again I hope he will be able to run well wherever he turns up, the options being Wetherby, Newbury and Doncaster.

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What an exciting weekend of racing from Cheltenham! Once again the stable enjoyed a great deal of success at the Paddy Power fixture with the three day meeting yielding three winners for the Pond House team. Much as I enjoy the meeting, I must confess to a small amount of relief that it is all over for another year – with the stable enjoying such a rich history of success at Cheltenham’s November meeting down the years, there is inevitably a greater degree of expectation and therefore pressure that goes along with it.

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Last week was another productive one for the stable with four winners taking our seasonal tally to a very respectable 47. The successes of youngsters Saint John Henry, Tullyesker Hill, Herbert Park (pictured above) and Bidourey (none of them older than five) bodes well for the future of the stable, while we still have an enviable array of more established stars to look forward to in the weeks and months ahead. Indeed, there is plenty to look forward to as the tempo increases with the close of the flat season and we have a raft of entries this week, culminating in the Paddy Power meeting at Cheltenham this weekend.

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It has been yet another busy week with a trip up to the sales at Newmarket punctuated by runners at the races and early closing entries. We picked up three nice prospects from the Tattersalls Horses In Training Sale, enjoyed a nice winner at Stratford when Street Entertainer bolted up in the selling hurdle under Tom Scudamore on Thursday and made entries for the Paddy Power Gold Cup, Hennessy Gold Cup and Greatwood Hurdle.

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