BIG CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE

Jeremy Grayson starts this month with a promising chase performance in Shropshire

LUDLOW, 8 January (Good to soft, soft in places)

2m7f171yds (+88yds) 0-115 AR/CJ Hands and Heels Handicap Chase (class 4)

Aside from five winners (including Global Citizen’s success in the Wayward Lad) during December it’s been a pretty chastening 2019-20 season so far for Ben Pauling, with a strike-rate still languishing in single figures and some of his divisions (notably bumper horses) not providing the quantities of successes usually expected. The Bourton-on-the-Water handler still has plenty of relatively lightly raced stock to throw at the final third of the season, however, and BIG DIFFERENCE’s determination in recording a diminishing 10l fourth having done the splits four fences from home augurs well. Still only two races into both his current campaign and chasing career, the seven-year-old nephew of six-time Grade 1 and 2 scorer Quito De La Roque continues to make most appeal on sharp tracks such as Ludlow and Market Rasen (scene of his hurdles score), around which a 0-115 stayers’ contest can be his granted a blemishfree round. Good and good to soft ground have served him best so far.

SEDGEFIELD, 10 January (Soft, good to soft in places)

2m3f188yds (-25yds) Maiden Hurdle (class 4)