Weekend review and a rare Sedgefield runner

A slight frost this morning here in Cumbria after an absurdly warm weekend, 18 degrees at Ayr on Saturday, 19 at Carlisle yesterday. Delighted with Bel Amigo finding his form to win in tough style at Carlisle yesterday, a great ride from Bruce and a lovely surprise as I wasn’t sure we had found the key.

It rounded off a good weekend for the yard with Ned Tanner producing a career best to win the feature chase at Ayr on Saturday and My Kiwi Girl and Ballyfort both winning well on Friday.  Four winners from the fourteen runners, some good runs in defeat as well but as ever some disappointments.

Half Track bounced back to form to be a close 4th, pleased with that but I’m sure he’s better than this, we have a plan… Maillot Blanc travelled and jumped well but faded into a well beaten 5th, an attritional race on the ground and am sure he will be seen to better effect in the spring.

Travail d’Orfevre was well beaten when Bruce pulled him up before the last, not sure what the issue is but I suspect we pushed him too far into the red zone in the Borders National and it has left its mark, we will run a few checks to be sure nothing else is bothering him.  Gipsy Lee Rose drifted in the betting and ran accordingly, just wasn’t her day for some reason.

On Saturday Anamanda was running a lovely race until falling three out, she and Dom seem fine thankfully, Mack the Man ran a much better race to be a good 3rd.  As has happened before Artic Row was unable to quicken on the soft and holding ground, at least his jumping held together and he wasn’t beaten far up in grade but he is a much better horse than this as I am sure we will see when he has conditions in his favour – need to restore his confidence now though.

Boolamore Classic ran another solid race to be 5th, he maybe doesn’t quite get home over 3m on soft, Jirko travelled into his race nicely but found the 3m too big a step up, Master Bricklayer can’t have been right and wants better ground.

On to Sedgefield tomorrow where we have one runner on ground that I hope will be on the easy side of good.  Spectress in the mares bumper at 16.53; she is progressing nicely but this has turned into a rather better race than I’d hoped for, hopefully she can run well – 10 run and Bruce rides.

All eyes on the Cotswolds this week and much hoo ha about Lossiemouth ducking the Champion Hurdle to be odds on in the Mares’ Race.  Understandable but disappointing, solution to this must be to turn the Mares’s Race into a Grade 2 thereby forcing the best mares to take on the boys and prove themselves true champions.