We are looking forward to hosting our first big race meeting since the Christmas lockdown with Six Nations Race Day on Saturday 26th February.
There are seven races from 1.08pm following by the Wales v England game live on the big screen in the Fans Zone from 4.45pm. Covid passes are no longer required for entry. Tickets are just £10 in advance.
The Welsh were involved with four Lingfield winners on Saturday.
In the opener, trainer Robert Stephens had made it three from six on the flat this year when Melakaz completed a hat-trick. By using seven pound claimer Harry Davies, the horse’s burden was reduced to a featherweight seven stone twelve.
David Probert collected two more winners at the Surrey track. To begin with, he steered the odds-on War In Heaven to his second victory in a row. It was the Andrew Balding-trained three-year-old’s first run in a handicap. Later he got Protected Guest home in a four-horse race, in which they all finished within a length of each other. Probert has ridden 32 winners this year, the last fourteen in the space of fourteen days with a strike rate of 29%.
In the finale Balding gave one of the Kingsclere apprentices, Welshman Joshua Bryan, the mount on the 1/10 favourite Notre Belle Bete, who duly obliged.
Christian Williams and Jack Tudor combined to win Uttoxeter’s 3m chase on Saturday with Motown Lake. The horse unseated last time out, when he was favourite for his first outing in a handicap, but made no mistake this time. Lightly raced, and rated only 80 before this, he could have plenty of improvement to come.
The Potter Group Welsh Champion Hurdle winner Glory And Fortune (photographed) franked that form when he finished a close second to Epatante in Kempton’s Christmas Hurdle. It looked even better when Glory And Fortune won the Betfair Hurdle on Saturday, earning himself a tilt at the Champion Hurdle. His jockey Stan Sheppard is having a great season, having ridden the Coral Welsh Grand National winner Iwilldoit.
Incidentally, the runner-up in that Ffos Las race, the Evan Williams-trained Dans Le Vent, won a Group 3 handicap next time out at Haydock and was third in a similar race at Sandown a week ago.
Alan Johns rode Run To Milan to win an Exeter veterans chase on Sunday for Victor Dartnall. It was the horse’s third course success. He’s only just turned ten and bowling along in front for three miles on very soft going is clearly his forte.
