Champion trainer Ellis set for another good season

Tom Ellis paraded some point-to-point and hunters’ chase stars and exciting prospects at his Warwickshire yard on Sunday.

Yet the reigning Foran Equine champion trainer will be without the assistance of his wife Gina Andrews in the saddle for the first few weeks of the season. Her brother, Jack, will be riding the bulk of the yard’s younger horses before the New Year, while Gina, Britain’s nine-time champion woman rider, is nursing a long-standing knee injury involving her anterior cruciate ligament. She said: “I don’t feel any pain riding – walking is more of a problem. I’ll be riding at Cheltenham in the amateurs’ chase on Friday and in Ireland the following week, but few if any of our older horses will be out before Christmas and Jack will ride the babies that run.”

Tom Ellis, flanked by Gina and Jack Andrews

Ellis, who has won the Foran Equine championship for yards with eight or more horses for the past four years, and who last season also won the champion hunters’ chase trainers’ title, expects to saddle his first runner at Badbury Rings on Sunday.

He told owners at the parade said: “We are very proud of what we have achieved here, but we couldn’t have done it without your support. It’s going to be hard to top last season [when he saddled 62 point-to-point winners] but we will do our best.”

Latenightpass, who was bred and is owned by Ellis’s mother Pip, won last season’s Randox Foxhunters’ Chase and is being primed for another attempt on that race. Ellis said: “We never imagined he would turn out as good as he has and he doesn’t realise how small he is. Two seasons ago we feel he left Aintree behind at Cheltenham, so last season we skipped Cheltenham, went straight to Aintree, and he won. This season he will go back to Aintree and follow a similar path to get there.”

Latenightpass’s half-sister, Latenightfumble, is in training and can be forgiven a disappointing run at Stratford following a tough race when winning at Cheltenham’s evening meeting, while Gina said of Dubai Quest, who was fourth in last season’s St James’s Place Festival Hunters’ Chase: “He’s a very talented horse, a very strong stayer and he loves soft ground. He came in a month later than the other horses and won’t run until after Christmas, but he could go back to Wetherby for the hunters’ chase he won last season.”

Latenightfumble, a Cheltenham winner, with Ellis’s father Tony

Another ace in the Ellis pack, Fumet D’Oudairies, found the Festival too hot last season, but he won the ladies’ hunters’ chase at Stratford and looked in grand form.

Fumet D’Oudairies, who believes he is the king of the yard, pauses for the audience with groom Ellie Callwood

Other proven pointers who paraded included Mammoth (top picture with groom Ellie Callwood), Bawnmore, General Arrow, Loughan, Master Templar, Dundrum Wood and Precious Bounty, and the yard has gained a number of new recruits with form under Rules. There is also a host of young horses aged three and four, many of them broken in or schooled by Jack. He described an unnamed son of Pether’s Moon as: “One of our leading lights among the four-year-olds. He might go to Hexham [on November 27],” while of a three-year-old by Jack Hobbs out of the good racemare Mickie, he said: “His half-brother sold to Paul Nicholls for €120,000 and this one is very relaxed and has a great attitude.”

A 4yo son of Pether’s Moon who could make his debut at Hexham’s Border meeting, led up by Martha Reeve

Jack Hobbs 3yo gelding out of Mickie

Jemma Justice leads Clover All Over, who was third in a Flat race on debut last season

Captain Biggles, a 7yo maiden with four places under Rules, has joined from Olly Murphy’s yard