9th March 2017

We schooled Pinnacle Peter, Arctic Sword, Toledo Silver and Kalahari Queen over 12 fences, all jumped beautifully. We even had a rather agricultural field master riding one.

The others all had routine canters, Chase End Charlie had a blow on the hill, he runs at Sandown tomorrow. As to be expected, it is a competitive 0-135 handicap, some horses look better handicapped than others. Charlie got 5lbs for his Wincanton win which doesn’t help.

Matt Chapman wasn’t sparing Phil Smith today on ask the handicapper, I only caught the last few minuets on ATR but it was amusing anyhow. Matt Chapman was suggesting that the handicapper is harder on horses trained by trainers with a higher percentage of winner than others. Trainers nearly always feel hard done by the handicapper, my complaint is the length of time they take to drop the horses back down when it is clear that they, the handicapper has the horses measure.