A winner, two 2nd’s and two 3rd's over the Bank Holiday weekend.

Tue 28 May 2019

We had a great few days around the country with our runners at Chester, Redcar, Windsor and York. Our team were at all these courses to meet with lots of our owners, who took advantage of the long weekend to enjoy some early summer racing.

Our first runner for our newly announced merger with Ventura Racing was COPPER KNIGHT in the £50k Class 2 at York on the Saturday. He ran a great race to be 3rd, with the Roger Fell trained HAROME staying on for 6th- we were pleased with his run from him. Both horses will now head to Epsom on Derby day for the 5f £100k Investec Dash. Can we win again like the marvellous Captain Dunne did for us in 2011?

On Bank Holiday Monday there were thrills at both Redcar and Windsor – with a tense 5 minutes from 4.10 to 4.15: The speedster ENCHANTED LINDA took a good 2nd after stumbling at the start in the 5f sprint and then it was the big one: The feature ZETLAND GOLD CUP, with a result none of us would have predicted! LEROY LEROY ran a corker to be 2nd by just a ‘head’ (over a new trip too) and VENTURA KNIGHT took a good 3rd place. Timeform have rated Leroy’s run as 103, so his best performance yet and we and his trainer Richard Hannon are now cooking up some plans for him…

5 minutes later we and the owners of our David O'Meara trained WAARIF, were stood in the paddock at Windsor, with the cameras focusing on the Sir Michael Stoute and Ryan Moore ridden favourite, which did look impressive. Adam Kirby rode a perfect race though, showing impeccable judgement with the pace, producing him as last off the bridle, to pass the aforementioned leader and win! We watched the race on the balcony of the Owners and Trainers lounge and think the roof was lifted with the cheers!

A big thank you to Sarah Phillips from David's yard, who was on her own with Waarif and did a superb job with him.

Well done to all our owners and great to see so many at the races - that's what it's all about! So, we are on 26 winners now and £340k of prize money and an exciting two days at Epsom to look forward to, with our Mark Johnston trained MARIE'S DIAMOND in the Listed Surrey Stakes on Friday!