New Era!

TOMORROW truly is the start of an exciting new era as we send out our first runner from our new yard at Hazelrigg. The moving process is pretty much complete and everyone – horses, staff, trainer and family – is settling into the new surroundings.

It goes without saying it’s a top-class facility and we’ll show off everything we’ve got here soon enough once we’ve got everything operating the way we want it to.

ARCTIC AMBITION (2.00) has the honour (or should that be pressure!) of being the one kicking off this new chapter for us down at Worcester, where we’ve headed off to tonight. We were really happy with his run at Cartmel last time, justifying our belief that he was a solid each-way chance going into it. The conditions and change of running style, being put more forward than he has in the past, all contributed to a good effort. We’ll run him similarly this time and I think having longer straights and less turning than you need to do at Cartmel will help him.

The handicapper has put him up 4lbs from the last time, which I think is a bit harsh and means he’s only going to get 1lb from the top-weighted horse. That frustrated me when I heard because I thought two would have been fair but in the end it was double that! There’s nothing we can do about that, though, so hopefully he’ll kick on once more and be competitive again.