Racegoers dug deep into their
pockets at the recent Worcester meeting, donating generously to Macmillan
Cancer Support, and raising a fantastic £5,335 for the charity.
Throughout the year, racecourses
and racegoers together, raise hundreds of thousands of pounds for a wide range
of charities.
The feature handicap chase on the
day was a very competitive affair. Seven of the 11 horses declared for the race
had previously run over the course and distance, and of those seven, five were
former Worcester winners including last year’s race victor, the Irish raider,
Nearest the Pin.
The David Pipe trained, Purple N
Gold (pictured below) came out on top, following up his August Worcester win and seeing off the Sam
Twiston-Davies ridden Benefit Cut by 3¼ lengths.
With the unofficial start of the
winter jumps season being staged as a two day meeting at Chepstow this weekend,
we are all looking forward to seeing how Barry Geraghty’s new position as first
jockey to JP McManus progresses. Geraghty, who has only ever had 5
rides at Worcester, the most recent being 2½ years ago, came to Pitchcroft to
ride four Jonjo O Neill trained horses at the last meeting.
Unfortunately, he was out of luck
with all 4 mounts on that occasion but I am sure he won’t be out of the winner’s
enclosure for long.
As a permit trainer, when you
travel 347 miles to Worcester from Malton in North Yorkshire, to run one of the
few horses you own and train in a selling hurdle, it is extremely unfortunate
to have to go up to 14,500 guineas to buy your horse back in the subsequent
auction. This is exactly what happened to
Neville Ender, trainer of Grey Monk. The
horse beat previous Worcester selling hurdle winner, Marju’s Quest into third
place. The runner up, Wind of Hope, is
trained by Lucinda Russell in Scotland. Russell
was the under bidder by telephone, which must underline how she rates her own
horse. The quality of horses running was
above the usual selling hurdle standard.
The Worcester staff enjoyed a
team building day at Southwell’s jumps meeting last week, but it was a long way
to go to watch Worcestershire trainers win 3 of the 6 races on the card!
Youm Jamil, trained by Tony
Carroll at Cropthorne ran at Worcester in 2012 and 2013 and won the opening
Handicap Chase.
Claines based Richard Newland
sent Cut the Corner to the Nottinghamshire course to go one better than the
three second places he has achieved at Pitchcroft this summer.
Finally, the Big Dipper, trained
at Hanley Swan by David Dennis, also bettered his third place at Worcester by
winning the 3 mile handicap hurdle.
We look forward to another
afternoon of competitive racing at Worcester on Thursday, when gates open at 12
noon.
