Tickets sales for Caribbean Race Night on Friday 28th July are going well with an expected attendance of 4000+ customers. There are six races from 5.40pm with the superb Bob Marley tribute act The Trenchtown Experience performing after racing around 9pm. Tickets are on sale in advance and on the night with a handful of places still available in The View Restaurant. We are also racing this coming Thursday 20th July with six races from 2.30pm.
Chester has often been a happy hunting ground for David Probert and his visit there on Saturday yielded three winners.
The first of them was on the Andrew Balding-trained two-year-old Loaded Gun. Soft going was no hindrance and six furlongs should not be a problem. Half an hour later Probert rode the Charlie Hills filly Divine Libra to victory. The filly has now won over six and seven furlongs, on soft and heavy. The treble was completed by Holguin, another for the Balding yard. Since winning on his debut last year Holguin had finished second five times in eight races.
In each race Probert used every part of the straight for his finishing efforts and demonstrated his mastery of the new whip rules, using the stick sparingly and urging his mounts on to great effect with hands and heels.
He is in such demand that he has been provisionally pencilled in for rides at Leicester, Chepstow and Epsom on Thursday. Jockeys can only ride at one meeting per day, so it will be interesting to see where he winds up.
There were small fields at Perth on Sunday, where Sean Bowen is a frequent visitor. He had three rides there, two of them odds on. The first of them, Gordon Elliott’s By Your Side, was withdrawn and Bowen switched to the stablemate Jay Jay Zee, which became the new odds on favourite. But he could only finish second.
Bowen had better luck on the 1/3 shot Born Famous in a three-horse race. Jumping well, the mare breezed ahead at the third last fence and won her fourth race in a row since joining Scottish trainer Iain Jardine. That success was winner number 52 of the season for Bowen.
He made it 53 when the least fancied of his mounts at 3/1, Themanintheboots, won the three mile hurdle. Raised nine pounds for a win here over half a mile less last time out, he tracked the pacemaker before going into second place 6f out and taking a share of the lead two out. After a good scrap Themanintheboots shook off his rival halfway up the run-in and powered four and a half lengths clear. It was Gordon Elliott’s 220th winner at Perth.
