THE blistering start to the season continued with the yard bringing in plenty of winners. A treble on the Friday of Cheltenham’s showcase meeting followed by another treble in Wincanton on the Sunday.

One of the highlights of the season so far has to be the remarkable Cliffs Of Dover. Rated a lowly 64 on the flat, he has now won five of his six starts over hurdles, taking a Cheltenham handicap hurdle and followed that with his most impressive performance to date, in a listed juvenile hurdle at Wetherby last weekend.

Ridden by Harry Cobden, he has won four straight races in a two week period. A lot of credit goes to Harry who has done a smashing job on this horse at home and he is reaping the rewards on the track.

I was off to Wetherby last week for their Charlie Hall meeting. Kate and I headed off early on Friday morning with Cliffs Of Dover, Silsol and Virak. Some 250 miles away meant we had to travel up early and stay overnight for the day’s racing on Saturday.

As already mentioned, Cliffs Of Dover got us off to a flyer on the Friday. We exercised Silsol and Virak on course early on Saturday morning. Silsol was our first runner in the three-mile Grade 2 Great Yorkshire Hurdle. Ridden by regular partner Jack Sherwood, Silsol dug deep in a gutsy staying display to beat Native River in a thriller.

It was a first win at Grade 2 level for both our jockey Jack and owners Dan and Michelle McDonald. The long journey home didn’t feel that long after another successful northern raid!

I found myself in a very lucky position on Tuesday 25th when I got the enviable job of riding Ptit Zig on a racecourse gallop around Chepstow. We also worked Silviniaco Conti ridden by Harry Derham, Aux Ptit Soins with Nick Schofield and Zubayr in the capable hands of Harry Cobden.

BUSY TIMES

All the horses have big engagements coming up and it was a lovely pipe opener for them. Silviniaco Conti heads to Down Royal today and fingers crossed he can add an amazing eighth Grade 1 to his tally.

I will be in Paris driving Ptit Zig over to his beloved Auteuil where he is already two-time Grade 1 winner on the Paris turf. On our trips to France, we go via the Euro tunnel and amazingly we arrive at our destination in Maison-Laffitte quicker than it takes us to get to Perth! With the extraordinary levels of prize money available compared to the UK, it’s the obvious road to go down.

As I mentioned in the last issue, we have a massive team of novices and young horses to run and we had the opportunity to get some of them to the track recently. The hugely exciting Movewiththetimes won in Fontwell under Barry Geraghty, for J P McManus, and he is a novice hurdler with vast potential.

The hugely improved El Bandit has now lost his novice status but signed off in great style after a win at Cheltenham. Coup De Pinceau, by Bucks Boum, and Brahms De Clermont both won bumpers carrying penalties under conditional jockey Stan Sheppard.

A horse I am very excited to see run is Capitaine who is due to run very soon, an easy winner of his bumper in the spring, he has bags of potential and hopefully can make up into a smart novice hurdler.

For information on our runners at Down Royal, Auteuil and Wincanton this weekend please check out Paul’s betfair blog at https://betting.betfair.com/horse-racing/paul-nicholls/