ROBINS ARE READY TO FLY

Jeremy Grayson with his latest runners to follow from off the beaten track of jump racing

WETHERBY, 31 March (Soft)
1m7f36yds (+27yds) 0-100 Novices’ Handicap Chase (class 5)

A near-4l fourth for ROBINS FIELD did at least bring to an end an increasingly unfortunate sequence of non-completions (PPFUPP), but how much better it might have been for him without two significant errors at the final pair of fences, the first after having just got to the front. It’s not hard to put those mistakes down to never having been meaningfully involved at the business end of a race hitherto, and overall this was a performance that suggests his current mark of 80 – already 12lb lower than the initial one apparently allocated to him off the back of a single completion in hurdles - is surely conquerable when getting all of the basics right.

An older half-brother to Ballygeary, recently a 2m-2m3f hat-trick scorer in novice hurdles for Donald McCain, Harriet Dickin’s son of Robin Des Champs has enough other encouragement elsewhere in the pedigree (the likes of Sweet Duke) to suppose a step up in trip could be coped with if racing slightly less free than he did here; indeed, perhaps something like a 2m4f or 2m7f chase this summer around Worcester, where in theory he’d once again have as much time to organise himself at the fences as he did here, could prove near to an optimum requirement.

2m (-45yds) Novices’ Hurdle (class 4)