The main intrigue at last Wednesday’s Worcester meeting for me, was all about four of the seven winning horses.
When you delve a little deeper into the stories behind those horses, who together have earned their Connections £145,655 in prize money, interesting statistics emerge with one common theme. All four horses are Worcester specialists. The four horses ranging from 5 to 8 years old, have run at Pitchcroft a total of ten times, nine of those runs were winning ones and the tenth was a second place.
The story begins with the locally trained Theo, based at Claines with Dr Richard Newland. The gelding ran his first race for Newland at Worcester back in June 2017, shortly after coming over from Ireland. That race was the first of a sequence of 5 straight wins. The horse has run 31 times in all, four of those have been under jockey, Sam Twiston-Davies and all four have been successful. Of his 8 completed starts for Newland, Theo has won on 6 occasions, 2 at Worcester.
The next horse also came over from Ireland in the summer of 2017 and also won his first race for his new trainer, Ian Williams at Worcester. Psychedelic Rock’s form at the course reads 1121 and his victories include the £25,000 final of the 7bets4free.com Fixed Brush Hurdle Series last October.
Both of my other two horses are now qualified for the £30,000 final of the 2018 Fixed Brush Hurdle series at Worcester on 24th October, a race that is shaping up to be most competitive.
Carntop, owned by the Duchess of Cornwall and Arsenal Chairman, Chips Keswick and bred by The Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall has now had 4 National Hunt runs for trainer, Jamie Snowden, 2 of those were winning ones and both were at Worcester.
Finally, the only mare and the sole chestnut of my four horses, Skin Deep is trained by Alan King and was also bred in Ireland. The mare is out of a half-sister to the very successful Yanworth and has run 5 times, with her only 2 wins coming at Worcester. The first of these was a bumper in July and for the mare’s maiden hurdle last week, Barry Geraghty was brought over from Ireland to take the ride as retained jockey for owner, JP McManus.
Worcester was officially the busiest summer jumping track in Great Britain through the oppressive heatwave months of June and July, when we staged 9 meetings in 8 weeks. We watered the track on 49 days out of 61 and despite the unusually warm temperatures, the course was more popular than ever with the trainers who have collectively run 870 horses to date, compared with 803 over the same period in 2017.
The trend of busy racedays continues this week, with racing taking place at the Severnside course for the final evening meeting of the year tomorrow with the Sounds of the Summer Jazz night, and then the Family Fun raceday on Sunday, just before the children go back to school.
By Jenny Cheshire, Executive Director Worcester Racecourse.
