Centara and Killaloan kept the scoreboard ticking over during the first of three relatively quiet weeks before an exciting end to the season when we will be gearing up to take strong teams to Aintree, Cheltenham, Ayr, and Sandown.
Centara has needed time to mature and repaid the patience of his owner Kathy Stuart with a stylish success on his racecourse debut in a bumper at Taunton last Monday. He will now probably run in the Aintree bumper.
On Thursday Killaloan completed an impressive hat-trick at Ludlow with a comfortable success in the colours of The Owners Group who are having a tremendous season. He is progressing nicely and looks one for the £100,000 Novice Championship Handicap Hurdle Final at Sandown on the last day of the season. We might also look at running him on the flat at some point this year given that he has a modest handicap mark of 66.
We left Newbury empty handed at the weekend where some of ours couldn’t handle the challenging conditions. On Friday Knowsley Road was a bit too free, and finished tired. He has plenty of ability and is one for next season when he will be jumping fences.
A day later I was hopeful of a decent show from Espoir De Guye in the BetVictor Handicap Chase but he was flat out the whole way and had a little bleed afterwards. Our bumper runner Summer Brise needs more time and will be a better five year old.
Once again we will not have too many entries in the coming days. Silent Revolution is our sole representative at Wincanton and we should have a couple of runners at Taunton on Thursday.
One that is likely to run at Stratford on Saturday is Beau Balko in a qualifier for the same race at Sandown as Killaloan.
For all the latest news on my runners on Saturday please do turn to my Betfair column which goes live early on Friday afternoon.