Daryl Jacob is back with his weekly column for the National Hunt season and he's looking forward to this weekend's Showcase Meeting at Cheltenham.
It’s great to be back with proper National Hunt horses, the ground is perfect after the weather we’ve had and I’m schooling good horses every morning now, so the jumps season is back. Dark mornings are always a good sign for me!
As for Simon and Isaac’s horses, I sat on Fusil Raffles on Thursday morning and he felt fresh and well, I think he’s a bigger and stronger horse this season, Top Notch had a jump and Kildisart felt in good form at home, too.
All the horses are training well at the moment so long may that continue. I’m just looking forward to getting them out on the racetrack where hopefully the horses can do the talking.
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Wholestone – 3.45 Cheltenham Friday
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I was delighted with his chase debut at Perth, some people were crabbing his from but that horse has only run twice going right-handed in his life, he’s a real left-handed specialist that loves Cheltenham.
Everything was against him that day as he had to make the running and he wasn’t 100 per cent fit either, but he’s come out of it with flying colours and he seems to have improved plenty for the run.
It will be nice to get him out around Cheltenham, see how he handles the fences around there and then we can make a plan going forward.
I think he’ll be okay around there, it looks a competitive race but all those novice chases are going to be top-class from now on and you can’t avoid the good horses.
WATCH: Daryl Jacob chats all things Cheltenham with Dave Ord
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I’ve been really happy with him at home and I’m glad we made the decision to keep him for novice hurdles this season.
He’s run a couple of times in France and been placed in hurdles over there, but he’s quite an exciting horse and I quite like him having sat on him plenty of times in his work.
His homework has been good, he schools nicely and we’ll get a feel for him on Friday after which we can map out a future for him this season.
He won nicely at Stratford last time, obviously Cheltenham is a very different track, but I know a little bit about the horse having sat on him in his younger days at Ben Pauling’s and it’s nice to get back on him again.
I’m really excited about getting on him in the Mastersons Holdings Hurdle on Saturday.
I thought last year on soft ground he was the most exciting juvenile hurdler in the country. After running in France earlier in the year he was probably a little bit flat towards the end of a long campaign, but I’m hoping for better things now he’s been freshened up during the summer as he gave me a great feel at Chepstow first time up.
He felt really good there, I thought off top weight at the beginning of the season he might be a bit more gassy than he was, but he got into a nice rhythm and relaxed a little bit better for me, so all these signs are good, he’s still learning, we’re still educating him with the future in mind.
The ground is a massive factor for him, so hopefully it will rain plenty on Friday night and if it does he’s an exciting prospect for us.
WATCH: Daryl Jacob on the season ahead
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