It was a tale of three ‘firsts’
in the final race at Pitchcroft last week. Neverownup was sent off the 3/1
favourite and was having his first run for Grand National winning Claines trainer,
Richard Newland in the concluding handicap hurdle. The horse had been claimed
out of a Fakenham selling race in April. The victory was the first for Newland at his local course this summer
and it was also Neverownup’s first win under rules, having had decent place
form in the past including at Worcester
in 2013.
Newland plans to keep the 9 year
old on the go, and indeed he followed up the Worcester win with an easy victory over
fences at Fontwell on Sunday, and then a 12 length victory over fences again at Hexham yesterday evening.
It was the strongest running of
the annual Hargreave Hale Stockbrokers Hunter Chase for some time. The winner, Lake Legend,
Lake Legend’s owner, Jerry
Wright, who is recovering from a triple heart bypass operation recalled that
his first ever winner was at Worcester with a horse called What’s the Crack,
who was victorious on Wright’s birthday back in 1987 when trained by Henrietta
Knight.
Recently crowned champion trainer,
Paul Nicholls had a productive day. Fresh from selling 10 horses at Doncaster sales, he stopped in at Worcester on his way back
to Ditcheat and was rewarded with a quick double. Nick Schofield rode both winners. The first
was in the national hunt novice hurdle aboard Sergeant Thunder who redeemed
himself after a fall at Wincanton 2 weeks previously. The second was in the
Novice Hurdle on Merrion Square
who had lost his way over fences and will benefit from a confidence boosting
win over Worcester ’s
French style hurdles.
Nicholls was very complimentary
about the Pitchcroft ground and confirmed he will be running more of his summer
jumpers at the course in the weeks to come.
A feature of the night was the
presentation by the Davis family of the Richard
Davis award to the leading conditional jockey accumulating points at Worcester,
Cheltenham, Stratford , Ludlow ,
Warwick ,
Chepstow and Towcester racecourses. The
award commemorates the late Richard Davis, the young and talented jump jockey
from Flyford Flavel who lost his life in a fall over fences at Southwell in
1996.
Previous well-known winners of
the award include Sam Twiston-Davies, Aidan Coleman, Robert Thornton, Timmy
Murphy and Joe Tizzard. This year the
trophy went to Gavin Shehan who went on to win the Ladbrokes sponsored bumper
immediately following the presentation.
The 2014 Worcester trainer’s championship has just
been launched by Connolly’s Red Mills and will run through the season with the
winning trainer receiving 2 tonnes of horse feed. The 2013 leading trainer was Jonjo O’Neill
and the previous year, it was Paul Nicholls who took the honours.
The gates open for afternoon
racing tomorrow at 12.10pm.
