Tuesday 18 February 2014

3 Weeks To Go

Three weeks today the gates will be open and the crowds pouring in to the magnificent Cheltenham Racecourse for the highlight of the jumps calendar. Four fantastic days of National Hunt racing then lie ahead at this historic event, littered with group 1 action.

We'll be keeping a keen eye on previous winners here to see how they fare on the biggest stage, including likely Gold Cup entrants; The Giant Bolster and Houblon Des Obeaux, trained by David Bridgwater and Venetia Williams respectively. No stranger to top class company and 4th in our class 2 feature race in 2013, Astracad has an entry in to the Queen Mother Champion Chase for the Twiston-Davies pair, Nigel & Sam.

In other big National Hunt racing news we've also seen 115 entrants put forward for the 40 runner maximum Crabbie's Grand National on Saturday 5 April. In the interests of the racecourse team here will be 15th place finisher in 2013, Balthazar King, who has since won three of his four races. The Philip Hobbs trained 10 year old won here back in September of 2010.

As the weather improves and the days get longer we draw ever closer to our season opener on the evening of Wednesday 7 May. At the home of summer jumps we're staging 22 fixtures this year, maybe unearthing another Cheltenham star in the process. Seven fantastic feature racedays are on the 2014 lineup with the first not too far away on Saturday 7 June, the immensely popular Edwards Motors Ladies Day.