Week In Review
January 14th
Dubrovnik Harry – PU Kempton
He was disappointing, but nothing has come to light. The only thing we’re taking from the race is the fact that 20 horses started yet only 4 finished, so we weren’t the only one that didn’t perform. He possibly did too much too soon in the conditions, but we’re scratching our heads to be honest. We basically don’t know. Nothing jumped out at us, it wasn’t like Ask Me Early after the Welsh National when his bloods were wrong. With Dubrovnik we’ve done all the routine checks and unfortunately nothing has come to light. In a way it’s better if you do find something, as you can sort it or get on top of it. They went a good gallop, and a lot of horses clearly didn’t get home in the conditions and that’s all we can put it down to at the moment. We’d rather have a clear answer, but sometimes that’s not always the case.
Weekend Preview
Sunday
Might I – 14:30 Lingfield
We’re dropping him right down in trip, from three miles to the minimum trip. He was too exuberant and did too much and didn’t give himself any chance of seeing out the trip at Haydock. But with the likely conditions at Lingfield on Sunday, they’re going to have to stay two miles and some! We’re looking forward to seeing him drop back in trip. He has some very good novice hurdle form last season. He’ll have top weight and off a mark of 142 he’s going to have to be on his A Game, but I think he’s up to justifying that mark and running extremely well. We’ve been very happy with him. We’ve been building him up to this race and as we’ve got nearer and nearer we’ve been more and more pleased with him, which is always nice as you feel you’re going into the race on a upward curve.
Metier – 15:30 Lingfield
We’re putting a line through Kempton, that just wasn’t him. We’re stepping him up in trip and keen to see how he handles it. He schooled particularly well for Sean Bowen last week. He will definitely relish conditions as he showed at the meeting last year. There’s no denying that we’re going into the race with a less than ideal preparation, given how he ran at Kempton, so I’m not going into it with the same level of confidence I had this time last year. However, if he bounces back to form, okay on official ratings he will have a little bit to find with some of his rivals, but I’d like to think that the conditions he’ll encounter will bring out the best in him and hopefully that’s what we’ll see.
Have a great weekend.
Harry
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