17.11.2015 Weekly update.

The highlight of this past week was undoubtedly the across the card double I had on Thursday courtesy of Helium at Ludlow and Blu Cavalier at Taunton. Blu Cavalier completed the double by scoring impressively in the bumper at Taunton under a very intelligent ride from Conor O Farrell. ‘Blu’ had clearly learnt a lot from his debut at Newton Abbot and it was wonderful for his owners Mr & Mrs Tinknell ( pictured) that he could record his first victory on only his second career start. Mr & Mrs Tinknell have shown a lot of faith and support in me by allowing me to train this homebred. His dam Blue Ride was a Listed winner in the Tincknells colours over hurdles and Blu Cavalier has already schooled over hurdles.

 

The first leg of the double was Helium, who was an impressive 12 length winner at Ludlow under Rhys Flint. Rhys has struck up a wonderful rapport with the horse and he is proving a tremendous advert for the newly formed West Buckland Racing Club. The club have had immense success in only a short period of time and together with the assistance of the racing club manager Dave Arthur the club continues to grow. I think Racing Club’s are a tremendous way of introducing new owners to our great sport as they are relatively inexpensive and provide a huge amount of enjoyment. The West Buckland Racing is only £50 a month and they have already appeared in the winners enclosure four times since its inception over the summer. There is more information on joining the racing club here 

I must also mention Sky Rose, who made her hurdling debut yesterday and she finished a very promising four thin her hurdling debut. She had schooled very well at home and she translated that to the racecourse. I was very pleased with this and I am sure she will be making her presence felt on her next start over hurdles; incidentally she is for sale to stay in the yard and for further information on her have a look on my for sale page.

As many of you will know and hopefully have read I have a weekly column in the Racing & Football Outlook and there is plenty more information in this weeks edition ( on sale from today).

Although we as a yard didn’t have any runners at Cheltenham this weekend I enjoyed watching the racing. The feature race of the meeting was the Paddy Power Gold Cup and along with the majority of people at Cheltenham I was delighted for Ian Popham who won he race on Annacotty. Ian has had some very well documented injury problems but it was great to see him back with a big win. He has ridden for me several times and won on Prince Tom at Newton Abbot last summer too.