In the News
As the National Hunt season draws to a close, we’ve got plenty of excitement to look forward too. There’s the season finale at Sandown, the closing festival at Perth and across the Irish Sea, there’s the Punchestown festival. We’ll be making the long journey up to Perth ourselves with Petiville, but there’ll be a few RHBloodstock graduates on show at Punchestown. Disko already showed his class on Tuesday when winning the three mile Novices Chase to add a second Grade One victory to his tally, with another RHB graduate Acapella Bourgeois finishing fifth. Hopefully Petit Mouchoir can run to a similar level on Friday in the Punchestown Champion Hurdle.
Last week’s runners
Petiville ran a pretty good race in the Maiden Hurdle at Perth today, finishing third on his first try over two mile four. He stayed on well over two miles last time to warrant this step up in trip and although he couldn’t quite show the best of his stamina in a slowly run race, he ran well. He didn’t jump the two hurdles in the straight fluently, but he was beaten less than two lengths in the end and perhaps in a more strongly run race he could find a bit more improvement.
This week’s runners
Ramonex joins us from Rebecca Curtis and he has an entry in the 2.00pm on Thursday over two miles. There’s some decent horses entered there and he is perhaps more one for the longer term, but the form of his last race doesn’t read badly, so hopefully he can sneak into the prize money.
Definite Outcome is another new face in the yard and has an entry in the Novices Handicap Chase on the Friday. He won a decent race at Chepstow at the start of the season, before unseating behind the ill-fated Arpege D’Alene at Aintree next time out. He’s not been firing on all cylinders since, but hopefully his new surroundings. He should enjoy the ground and has won over this sort of distance, so he’s worth his place in the race.
Finally, Going Gold is entered in the bumper on the Friday. He won his maiden point to point in Ireland, but hasn’t yet shown the same level in bumpers. He made a decent debut behind Poetic Rhythm at Chepstow, but was well beaten subsequently. He’s perhaps more of a long term project.