CONDITIONAL rider Dale Irving is on the move but he still hasn’t too far to commute to his new base from his home in Langholm.
Having left James Ewart recently, he has gone a few miles west across Dumfriesshire to the Carrurtherstown yard of Iain Jardine. Best wishes go to Irving whose big moneyspinner in recent years has been Aristo Du Plessis on whom he has won five races.
IT is great to see two Scottish-trained horses are among the 110 entries for the £1 million Randox Health Grand National at Aintree on April 8. Recent Warwick winner One For Arthur represents Lucinda Russell while Ayrshire handler Ian Duncan has pencilled in his 2015 Eider Chase hero Milborough. The last time a National winner was trained in Scotland was 1979 when Denholm-based John Leadbetter saddled Rubstic to victory.
There are also a few Scottish-owned entries in the world’s greatest steeplechase. Auroras Encore landed the 2013 renewal for Jim Beaumont and Douglas Pryde and the pair are represented by Maggio. Trained in Ireland by Patrick Griffin, Maggio missed the cut by seven in 2015 and was fourth reserve last year, so hopefully it will be third time lucky. I hear he is set to have his Aintree prep race in the Ivan Straker Memorial Chase at Kelso next week.
Borders couple Paul and Clare Rooney are triple-handed and their entries include Kim Bailey’s The Last Samurai who was such a gallant runner-up last year to Rule The World. Ayr-born Chris Giles is also the co-owner of Paul Nicholls-trained Le Mercurey who took the future Champion Novices’ Chase at Ayr last spring. Fingers crossed there might just be tartan ribbons on the newly-designed Grand National trophy.
AS revealed here, Rachael McDonald is turning professional and she told us at Ayr on Monday she is expecting her conditional licence to be granted shortly. Her talents were again well advertised on Sandy Thomson’s Mcgowan’s Pass who ran a mighty race to finish second in the bumper on his racecourse debut.
DAY two of Musselburgh’s Cheltenham trials today looks another quality card and star names such as Sam Twiston-Davies, Nico de Boinville and Barry Geraghty are just a few of the jockeys in action. The last named will fancy his chances in the 4.10 as Nicky Henderson-trained Cup Final bids to land the race for the second year running.
Don’t forget to check out our Twitter feed (@ScottishRacing) and scottishracing.co.uk for all the latest news.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here