Good novices at Huntingdon

Huntingdon stages one of its best days of the year today with the Sidney Banks Memorial for novice hurdlers at 16.30 CET as the main event. Even with only 5 runners this looks a good race, with All the Aces (Nicky Henderson/ Barry Geraghty) the form choice after 3 decent efforts at Newbury last time following some group class perfomances on the flat. Nagpur (Venetia Williams/ Aidan Coleman) has won his last two races, both on heavy ground, while Golden Gael (Jeremy Scott/ Nick Scholfield) has also won twice over hurdles and as a mare gets 7 lbs from the other two mentioned. Henderson and Geraghty also have a chance of winning the novice chase at 16.00 with Owen Glendower. However as the only chase winner in the small field, he has to concede 7 lbs to the others, and we are not sure he can manage this. Qaspal (Philip Hobbs/ Richard Johnson) won the Imperial Cup over hurdles in 2010, but has only run once since, and Megastar (Gary and Jamie Moore) could be more of a danger; he was arguably the best of these over hurdles and although he has not been so convincing over fences, he looks to have a winning chance now. A good performance from Golden Gael at 16.30 would be an obvious pointer to Night Rose (Alan King/ Robert Thornton) in the following mares novice hurdle, who was runner-up to her over this CD and then looked the likely winner when falling 2 out last time at Taunton.

The most interesting runner at Lingfield, where they race over jumps today, is the German-bred Val Mondo (Venetia Williams/ Harry Challonner) who runs in the conditional jookeys handicap hurdle at 17.20. This winner of the German St. Leger has not so far run up to expectations in the U.K. but ran respectably last time at Taunton and faces only modest opposition today.

The card at Thurles today is very low-key by Irish standards. Mazuri Cowboy (Eoin Doyle/ Ruby Walsh) has been runner-up on both his hurdles starts and can possibly make it third time lucky in the maiden hurdle at 16.55.
The racing at today´s all-weather meetings is not very inviting, but Mark Johnston continues in irrepressible form and can land a double at Southwell with Colour Guard (Joe Fanning) at 17.10 and Scatter Dice (Franny Norton) half an hour later.