Click Here For Racingpost.com Official Race Result

Photos From The Day

Video of the Race

A group of seven made the Sunday afternoon trip to sunny Southwell, with Peter travelling up with Phil & Sarah.  Paul travelled down by train from Harrogate, Lawrence drove up from the South East and Rory and Sally made the train journey north to round out the group.

Off the back of two poor rounds of jumping, it was hoped that TWYD was over the minor niggle that he had after the last race and that it was this that had caused his jumping problems.  We did not have long to wait to find out as ours was the first race on the card.

Neil was unable to make the trip, so we met Liz and Billy in the pre parade ring where TWYD was saddled.  It was then off to the paddock to meet Noel Fehily.  Noel’s instructions were to start forward on the outside in case TWYD was cautious over the first couple and lost ground.

The race started as planned, but despite jumping soundly, TWYD soon found himself midfield as the leaders went off quickly.  Whilst his jumping was generally sound, unfortunately he never really looked like he was travelling well in the race and Noel was revving him up with a circuit to go.

Unfortunately he never really looked like getting into the race despite being hard ridden to close round the home turn and Noel let him come home in his own time well beaten.

It was a disappointing performance especially as he had jumped better and there were no obvious answers.  Noel’s report was that TWYD had not done much wrong but that everything had been too quick for him and he expressed a preference to step up in trip. Others felt that the fences were the cause of the poor performance and that a return to hurdles was in order.

After staying on to watch a few more races, most of the group headed for home disappointed that the day had not gone to plan.