Monday 18 August 2014

Local Success On The Pershore Plum Festival Racenight

What happens when you mix 19 times champion jockey, Tony McCoy with Prunella, the Pershore Plum Festival mascot, Queen Victoria, the Plum Princess plus her attendants and the Pershore town crier?  The result is a great night out at Worcester Racecourse!

The action on the track rewarded a good sized crowd, sportingly dressed in the colour purple, with a few interesting surprises.


We are hard pressed to remember the last 100-1 winner at Worcester, but that is exactly what we witnessed when the only lady jockey of the night, Jodie Hughes, rode Panache to a memorable victory, giving Angela Clarke her first winner as a permit trainer. Beating the 11/10 favourite, Questioning, under McCoy, Panache has run 7 of his last 10 races at Worcester. The horse’s next race was a much tougher ask at Newton Abbot last week when he ran into 4th place in the novice hurdle.

Local success at the Plum Festival race night came from the Herefordshire yard of Venetia Williams who admitted it was the first time she had been racing since May. Monetary Fund made a winning debut over fences in the beginner’s chase and is now entered for our meeting tomorrow night.

Claines trainer, Richard Newland was on the score sheet at his local track with Discay under Sam Twiston-Davies. The horse looked anything but straight forward to ride, pulling hard and jumping awkwardly but he got the job done and will be better if he relaxes a bit more in his races.

Racing has witnessed a new beginning at nearby Wolverhampton Racecourse in the week when it became the first British course to race on a Tapeta surface. The track has been closed since April to allow the former Polytrack to be dug up and replaced with Tapeta. Reports from jockeys and trainers alike following the opening raceday were very positive and it promises to be a great asset to all-weather racing going forward.

August is traditionally the time of year for a short break in the National Hunt calendar. Leading into this period, there was a notable drop in field sizes with factors contributing to this including the quick ground and the quantity of race meetings. We were therefore pleased to see that 113 horses have been entered for tomorrow’s Ladies Evening and hopefully a good number of those will be declared to run. The vintage themed event is sponsored for the first time by local companies HallmarkHulme Solicitors and Startin Honda & Startin Skoda.


As a final note, we would like to add that we are very pleased to see one of the most personable jockeys in the weighing room return to Worcester this week, following horrific injuries sustained at the Cheltenham Festival. Daryl Jacob, who broke a leg, knee and elbow, had his first ride back at Fontwell last week.

The first race tomorrow evening is due off at 5.10pm.