Racing Post

Edwardstone in fine form for Grade 1 Henry VIII challenge

IT won’t be an overly busy week for us but we are looking forward to having a Grade 1 contender with Edwardstone in the Henry VIII Novices’ Chase. To be honest, I didn’t really want to fire him straight into a Graded race just yet but unfortunately we haven’t got too many options at the moment.

We had Araldur and Sceau Royal win the race in the past and it’s a strong possibility he will go there. I thought Edwardstone was very professional at Warwick the other day and that’s a track with plenty of jumping like Sandown, we know this is a big ask but these are the type of races we need to be looking at now.

He worked very well over the weekend and schooled nicely so we’ll have a look and see closer to the time – we’re just running out of novice chase options with him and I want to stick to two miles with him at the moment.

At Aintree we’ll have Raymond Tusk in the novice hurdle, where I hope he’ll improve from his Market Rasen run. I just thought the track was a little bit sharp for him and the big, long straight should suit him. He was a high-class Flat horse so I’d like to think he’d do much better.

We’ve had a few winners of the Listed fillies’ juvenile race in the last few years and we’ll likely have Kalma in there. She was very disappointing at Fakenham but she scoped badly after that and I hope we can put that run behind us. It’s usually quite a hot race so we’ll see.

On Wednesday, I run Harbour Lake in the introductory hurdle at Haydock. He runs in the colours of the late Trevor Hemmings and is a horse that was very impressive on his racecourse debut at Wetherby. We have given him plenty of time, as he’s very much still only a baby, but he is a horse we think a lot of so it’ll be exciting to see him out again. He surprised us a little bit by the way in which he won at Wetherby and I hope will continue progressing with experience.

We start off Glide Down over hurdles at Market Rasen and he has shown a nice bit of promise on the Flat. Later in the card we have a horse called Forget The Way in the bumper and, while he hasn’t run for us yet, he’s a lovely youngster who has been working very nicely at home. He’s a half-brother to Midnightreferendum who has been a very good, consistent mare for us and he’s by Getaway. He’s one we like and it’ll be interesting to see what he can do.

On To Victory will go for a handicap hurdle at Wincanton on Thursday. He ran ok when fourth at Sandown on his seasonal debut and he’s a horse who is probably better on a flatter track so that’s why we’re looking at bringing him there. The Devil’s Drop also runs and I hope he will shape better than his disappointing run at Lingfield. He looked to get stuck in the ground that day so hopefully conditions will be more to his liking. I might also put some cheekpieces on him as well to see where we are but in truth he’ll need to come forward.

North Lodge and Howzat Valtat were both due to take their chance at Bangor on Saturday but that meeting was cancelled and instead they could possibly go to Exeter. We haven’t confirmed that yet, we’ll see how they are midweek and how the races are shaping up first. That said, they’re two young horses that we like and look forward to getting them started whenever that is.

NEWS

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2021-12-01T08:00:00.0000000Z

2021-12-01T08:00:00.0000000Z

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Racing Post