Love the Jumps

It was an action packed week with a couple of big clashes, we will start off at Ascot with the Christy 1965 chase, it was Cyrname that come home in front taking away Altior’s unbeaten record over obstacles. The race went as expected with Cyrname making the running and Altior just following him around, it didn’t really get going till the home turn where Harry Cobden booted Cyrname into the last 2 fences and on to victory. After the race both sets of connections said that the King George on Boxing Day at Kempton was still the target with Cyrname after the win now being the fav for that race (9/4) and Altior (5/1). Both of them will still have questions to answer, Cyrname needs to prove he can do it away from Ascot, while Altior needs to bounce back and show he can get 3m, saying that I wouldn’t be surprised to see Altior back over 2m. The next race on the card was the Ascot Hurlde, which looked competitive on paper but ended up being a two horse race between Call Me Lor...

The Cheltenham November meeting took centre stage this week, but for a second it was touch and go if the meeting would go ahead, the Friday of the usual three day meeting was abandoned due to them getting over 37mm of rain, leaving the course waterlogged in places. All the grounds men and staff managed to do an amazing job to give the Saturday and Sunday the go ahead, with the course going amazingly only soft, heavy in places. We’ll start on Saturday with the Ballymore novices hurdle, this was won impressively by the Persian War winner Thyme Hill , in doing so he’s well and truly put himself in with a shout for the Ballymore come the festival (14/1) it was interesting that his trainer Phillip Hobbs said that he could be a 3m horse on decent ground, which has seen him also get a few quotes for the Albert Bartlett Novice Hurdle (14/1). Next up we had the Triumph Hurdle Trial, there was a hot favourite for this race in Mick Pastor , but the race didn’t go to the Nicholls tr...

It's been a busy week with quite a few horses making their seasonal reappearances and a few more gaining their second runs of the season, we will go back to last Saturday at Ascot where we had some nice winners and a fair bit of controversy, Ecco got his 2nd win of the season in nice style for Paul Nicholls and Bryony Frost when winning the Novices hurdle by 6 lengths, drawing clear after the last and winning with ease. The Sodexo Gold Cup later on in the day went to Vinndication who finished 5 lengths clear under a confident ride from David Bass, it was good to see him get back to winning ways after being well held in his last two starts at Sandown and Cheltenham behind Defi Du Seuil and Lostintranslation . For me the one to take out of the race was the Henderson trained On The Blind Side , he finished 4th after being held up and should come on a ton for that run.  Now where do we start with this race, the Byrne Group Handicap Chase was won by Diego Du Charmil , but th...