One For Arthur, who became Scotland’s second winner of the Grand National at Aintree last April, has been ruled out for the season with a leg injury by his trainer, Lucinda Russell.
The horse had come back into training at Russell’s yard near Kinross with a planned first run of the season at Kelso later this month and was already the ante-post favourite to become the first horse to win the Grand National twice since Red Rum in the 1970s.
However, Russell discovered a tendon problem in his right fore. "He's out for the season. It's not a big injury, but it's enough for us to stop with him,” she said. "It's obviously a shame, but hopefully we can get him back to full fitness."
One For Arthur, who also won the Classic Chase at Warwick last season, had completed his first piece of work when “he was found to have disrupted fibres in his right-fore superficial flexor tendon,” she added.
Given that One For Arthur is only an eight-year-old Russell is hopeful that he can return. “Arthur's Grand National win has changed our lives, and we are eternally grateful to him,” Russell said. “Arthur's welfare comes first and his rehabilitation will be tailored to bring him back for the Grand National in 2019.”
While Russell’s plans are now on hold everything went to plan for Rab Havlin at Lingfield Park.
Havlin, returning from an eight-month suspension imposed by the French racing authority, was riding Purser for John Gosden in the Injured Jockeys Fund EBF Novice Stakes.
Purser was the 4-9 favourite and won just as the price indicated, quickly away from the stalls and kicking clear off the bend to win by nine lengths.
“That’s a relief,” Havlin said. "I was looking at the day saying there was no pressure, but when I pulled up after the line I thought 'thank God for that'. Nothing went wrong. They're never winning until they've passed the line, but he's done it well.
"It was obviously a bit of a plan to get me to come back on a winner and it's nice of Frankie [Dettori] to step aside and let me ride him. He didn't take too much persuading to have another day off."
William Buick returns from eight weeks on the sidelines, after a compression of his T12 vertebra, and Blue Point in John Guest Bengough Stakes at Ascot tomorrow.
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