Two at Newton!

Myristica Runs at Newton Abbot!

Today we have two runners at Newton Abbot, Myristica and Kolisi both ridden by Jack Tudor.  Myristica has run well in three starts for the yard to date, on the flat at Newbury and then over hurdles at Worcester before winning impressively last time at Southwell.  She runs in the 3.05pm mares novices hurdle over 2m1f and despite carrying a penalty I will be disappointed if she doesn’t win again.  There are already two non-runners leaving a field of six in the race and there is only now one real danger in the race, Tique at the bottom of the weights who we do have to give quite a lot of weight away to.  This filly is making her hurdling debut for Seamus Mullins having won a bumper at Bangor last month so she could be interesting but I will be disappointed if Myristica does not put her experience to good use and win.  Our filly has a lot of natural ability and good attitude to match so fingers crossed she can be our sixth winner of the season.

Kolisi runs in the 2m1f handicap hurdle at 4.40pm and he looks to have a great chance.  After a winter break he returned with a pleasing effort at Market Rasen two weeks ago to be second and is expected to improve a bit for that run.  The handicapper dropped him two pounds for that run and so he drops down in class today and this is also his second start since a wind operation.  He won three in a row over hurdles in April last year and has generally been pretty consistent since and this looks a good opportunity for him to hopefully get his head in front once again.  He carries top weight in a twelve runner race but is forecast favourite and hopefully he can bring up a nice double for the team.

It is going to be pretty warm down at Newton Abbot this afternoon but the recourse do a great job in keeping the horses cool and adapting little things to put the welfare of the horses first.  Horses are pretty good at adapting to conditions like we are so it should be an enjoyable afternoon of racing ahead.  Newton Abbot is the only jumps fixture today but there is plenty of flat action from Yarmouth, Haydock, Kempton and Hamilton.  In Ireland they have a flat meeting at Limerick.

Over in Ireland at the moment we have the Goffs Arkle sale, formerly known as the Land Rover sale but it was re-named this year in honour of the mighty Arkle who went through the sales ring at Goffs as a three year old.  Yesterday and today make up part one of the sale and the three year olds look to be making plenty of money! There were several lots that made over 100,000 Euros with the top one I saw at the time of writing being a gelding, already named called Zamek being bought by Tom Malone for 160,000 Euros.  He is the son of  Beaumec de Houelle who I have to confess is not one that I have heard of but Zamek could be a name to look out for on the racecourse in a year or two’s time!  Because he is unraced however, they could change his name so he may slip under the radar!

I’ve trained my dog to go and fetch me a bottle of wine…he’s a Bordeaux collie! Have a good day!