{"id":3541,"date":"2015-03-09T17:02:18","date_gmt":"2015-03-09T17:02:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/horsington.blog2.idnet.com\/?p=3541"},"modified":"2015-03-11T17:18:31","modified_gmt":"2015-03-11T17:18:31","slug":"winterbourne-longjohns-gears-up-for-cheltenham","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/horsington.blog2.idnet.com\/?p=3541","title":{"rendered":"Winterbourne Longjohns gets Cheltenham Fever"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Wealth\"<\/a><\/strong>Winterbourne Longjohns, our resident racing correspondent reports from Cheltenham:<\/em><\/p>\n

With the curiously early cancellation due to \u201cbad weather\u201d of last week’s ‘free’ meeting at Wincanton four days in advance of its scheduled date, ‘Cannotwin’* \u00a0would seem to be intent on living up to its not entirely enviable soubriquet. The Jockey Club , which is responsible for the course, remains oddly silent as to the real reasons for this.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Perhaps an absence of entries may have a bearing\u00a0here. \u00a0Two weeks ago at Taunton a six race card, also on a Thursday, could only attract a grand total of thirty-three runners. Robin Oakley in this week\u2019s Spectator<\/em> suggests an interesting explanation.<\/p>\n

The real problem, he suggests, is not our National Hunt jockeys refusing to wear sun visors and so making a complete farce of many late afternoons hurdle races, but instead it is the fact that although \u00a0there are now 650 more race meetings than there were seven years ago in 2008 , there are now 1,600 fewer racehorses in training than there were in 2008. The much increased number of summer jump meetings may also contribute towards this as does the appeal to owners and trainers of much enhanced prize money for races scheduled to be run on a Saturday, while the overall dominance of events such as the Cheltenham Festival may also contribute to this. \u00a0In any event small mid week fields do nothing to persuade people to attend race meetings.<\/p>\n

And so to Cheltenham,<\/strong> where hope continues to annually triumph over experience. But of course we go on. This year Harry Fry is taking his strongest team to date to Prestbury Park. The disappointing news , especially so for this correspondent, having backed ROCK ON RUBY at 20\/1 in January to win Thursday\u2019s Ladbroke World Hurdle, with the horse having been withdrawn on Saturday after having been scoped badly following a disappointing mornings work, \u00a0was especially galling with ROR’s price at the time of the withdrawal having tumbled to 8\/1.<\/p>\n

JOLLYALLEN, also backed earlier in the year by Winterbourne at 20\/1, will be very much the centre of his attention \u00a0on Tuesday\u2019s opener, the Supreme Novice Hurdle. He represents the first ride of the week for A P McCoy at his final festival before retirement. We are told that A.P. has always liked JOLLYALLEN and believes that he will be well suited by the better ground he is likely to encounter here. MENDIP EXPRESS, \u00a0who is said to be in great order will be ridden by top amateur Will Biddick in the UBS H,Cap Chase, while BIT OF A PUZZLE \u00a0will be the Fry stable\u2019s third entry of the day in the OLBG Mares Hurdle in which the Irish trained ANNIE POWER \u00a0is expected to be a hot favourite.<\/p>\n

On Wednesday I am very much hoping to see ACTIVIALfinally achieve \u00a0an outstanding success in the Coral Hurdle. \u00a0Profitable places in big races at Ascot and Newbury mean that this gallant little grey owes us nothing, \u00a0but a success here is most certainly something to be wished for. \u00a0HENRYVILLE \u00a0has been pencilled in for the Pertemps on Thursday, where Tony Martin’s EDEYMI might well go close as a real Irish gamble<\/p>\n

Friday the Seaborough stable\u2019s hopes mainly rest on THOMAS BROWN in the Albert Bartlett Novice Hurdle. Harry Fry reports that he is in the form of his life and that the three mile trip \u00a0looks ideal for him. \u00a0It is possible that the Wincanton and Punchestown winner FLETCHERS FLYER may join him in the line up \u00a0for this race. Experienced conditional jockey Michael Nolan has been booked for JOLLYS CRACKED IT later in the day and KARINGA DANCER under the excellent Noel Fehily may run in the Grand Annual Chase which will feature A P McCoy’s last ride at the Festival. Finally Swinley Bottom’s French friends are very keen on the chance of their compatriots\u00a0Toutancarmont\u00a0in Wednesdays Cross Country event provided that the French pilot can successfully find his way around this impossibly confusing course.They do after all drive on a different side of the road!<\/p>\n

*A cunning, \u00a0cryptic and cynical anagram for Wincanton \u2013ED<\/em><\/p>\n

Check out the results<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Winterbourne Longjohns, our resident racing correspondent reports from Cheltenham: With the curiously early cancellation due to \u201cbad weather\u201d of last week’s ‘free’ meeting at Wincanton four days in advance of its scheduled date, ‘Cannotwin’* \u00a0would seem to be intent on living up to its not entirely enviable soubriquet. The Jockey Club , which is responsible … Continue reading “Winterbourne Longjohns gets Cheltenham Fever”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2763],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3541","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sport"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6glYD-V7","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/horsington.blog2.idnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3541","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/horsington.blog2.idnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/horsington.blog2.idnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/horsington.blog2.idnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/horsington.blog2.idnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3541"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/horsington.blog2.idnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3541\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3578,"href":"http:\/\/horsington.blog2.idnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3541\/revisions\/3578"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/horsington.blog2.idnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3541"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/horsington.blog2.idnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3541"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/horsington.blog2.idnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3541"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}