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Fixtures & Results
Find upcoming meetings, course info and the latest results – everything you need to follow the season.
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Britain’s most successful point-to-point rider heads to a racecourse on Monday he has yet to visit.
Will Biddick, who is now training full time from a yard in Somerset having hung up his boots in December, travels to Eyton-on-Severn in Shropshire for the Bank Holiday meeting where he plans to saddle Son Of Saratoga in the Goffs-sponsored GB Pointing Bonus Young Horse Maiden Series race (1.30).
Monday’s race is the fifteenth and final race in the series, one designed to put spotlight on young British pointers and which has gained plenty of positive comment while throwing up a number of talented four- and five-year-olds. Individual races have been sponsored by Goffs and Tattersalls Cheltenham, while the Levy Board has put up bonuses which offers cash sums of £15,000 and £25,000 to winners if they score under rules within two years.
Biddick (pictured above) has targeted the series with some of his young horses and been successful with Badbury Rings winner Six Two Three (who was named after the number of winners he rode in the sport) and Lascar Collonges who scored at Buckfastleigh. Both horses were subsequently sold privately and will next be seen racing from the yards of Dan Skelton and Henry Oliver respectively.
Of four-year-old debutant Son Of Saratoga (Crystal Ocean) Biddick says: “The plan is to run and Lucas Murphy will ride. He’s a horse who has taken until now to come to hand – he’s been a bit like me at school, a slow starter.”
The wide open spaces of Eyton-on-Severn, a new venue for Somerset-based Will Biddick (Ce)
If Irish-bred Son Of Saratoga were to win Monday’s race – which has drawn ten entries – he would be in line for a £15,000 bonus, and that is a carrot which led to his entry. Biddick says: “I wouldn’t have entered him for an ordinary maiden race that far away and wouldn’t be driving for three and a half hours if it wasn’t for the £15,000 bonus,” but while an M5 and M6 journey on a Bank Holiday Monday could be testing, Biddick is unconcerned about going that distance with an unraced youngster.
He says: “He [Son Of Saratoga] has never left the farm, but if the trainer has done their job the jockey gets it easy. All you have to do is steer them between the wings.”
Gina Andrews has made an entry for two horses, but says Master Chuggy and unraced Ocean View will run at Dingley on Sunday, while another Somerset-based trainer, Josh Newman, says of his two entries that newcomer Penarthur (Getaway) wis set to join the line-up. Darren Andrews, who this evening rode Bea Coward’s Ultimate Survivor to victory in Warwick’s Pertemps Network Intermediate Hunters’ Chase, will partner the horse for Newman who will be in action at Vauterhill in North Devon.
Newman, who has won races in the GB Pointing Bonus YHM Series with Micky Haller and Woodstock Octo, says: “We’re running Penarthur, who has been with us since the sales last summer. He’s taken a bit of time, but we gave him a school round at Dunsmore, then a bit of time off over Christmas and he’s come forward from it. He said he needed a break so we gave him one.
“Darren has done quite a lot on the horse and knows him, although we would like to see a bit of rain to confirm that the horse will run.”
Josh Newman, who has booked Darren Andrews to ride Penarthur at Eyton (Ce)
Newman is enjoying another good season in the saddle and as a trainer. He lies second to James King in the Tattersalls Cheltenham men’s championship, albeit he is 11 winners adrift, and he is also second to Andrews in the trainers’ title race for yards with 15 or more horses. In that competition Andrews has sent out 37 winners, two more than Newman and three more than Herefordshire trainer Chris Barber, who has entered unraced Chasing Good Times (Affinisea) in Monday’s GB Pointing Bonus race at Eyton.
Of the title race Newman says: “We’ve made entries at courses where we know they do a good watering job and if we get enough rain we will be there or thereabouts. You can stress about the weather, but there’s nothing we can do about it.”
*Winners of a GB Pointing young-horse maiden race land a bonus of £25,000 if GB bred and £15,000 if bred overseas should they be subsequently successful within two years in any of the following:
