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Dynamic Kate finished 11th in her race on her hurdling debut at Wincanton on Boxing Day. With most of the country under restrictions, only Eddie Kelly who lives close to the racecourse was able to attend in person.
Having had some problems at home learning to jump hurdles, it is fair to say that we approached this race with a fair degree of trepidation, with the main objective being that Kate should complete the race and jump around safely. She was calm in the preliminaries and Neil Mulholland suggested that our jockey, Harry Reed, should bury her in the pack early in the race to not give her much time to think about jumping the first couple of flights thus reducing the risk that she would try to refuse. That plan went awry right from the start as several went off quickly meaning that the field was quite well spread out instead of being bunched at the first flight. Harry tried to bury her behind the favourite but she saw the hurdle coming and jinked right and left slightly before realising it was easier to step over than to refuse. Thankfully, Harry sat tight as she was a little unbalanced on landing.
The good news, however, was that was the only real scare at the hurdles as she was quite clean at the 2nd and travelled well into the back straight in 8th or 9th, jumping the four flights there tidily enough. She lost a few lengths at this point and looked to be tiring as they left the back and began to turn towards home. She was plugging on in behind as they turned for home and finished the race jumping OK in the home straight.
She blew very hard after the race and clearly has a lot more to come in terms of fitness, but it was never his intention to have her fully wound up for this run as we wants to build her up to peak later in the season when we have some better ground.
Both Neil and Harry were very happy with the performance and feel that we have plenty to look forward to.
