Our man Dan Skelton discusses his Ladbrokes Winter Carnival runners
Published:
I run Present Ranger in the Ladbrokes “National Hunt” Maiden Hurdle at 12.20.
He’s a full brother to Grand National winner Ballabriggs and he is a lovely horse.
He’s going to be a horse who gets better with time, age, trip and eventually fences.
He’s not going to hit the headlines straight away but we like him plenty. He jumps nicely and I’d love to see him go and run well.
That said, I’m not applying the pressure on him and saying he has to do one thing or another. I want to see him run nicely and make a plan from there.
I’ve got two runners in the Ladbrokes Novices’ Hurdle at 13.20. Bekkensfirth is on his way back from an injury.
I’ve been struggling to get enough work into him at home and he’s a novice over hurdles so this is an ideal place to get him started.
I’m a long way off where I’d hoped I’d be but we’ll get him to the track and go from there. He’ll go back chasing at some point in the not too distant future.
Robin Waters is a great, big, scopey chaser, who won his only English point-to-point. He wants to start at a track like Newbury as he wouldn’t want to go around tighter tracks.
We do like him; he’s got a good attitude. These Novice Hurdles at Newbury are deep races though.
Oldgrangewood runs in the Ladbrokes Open Handicap Chase at 14.25. You’ve seen him run a couple of times this year.
He’s run very credibly and I hope he can go on and be competitive in this race.
It was a proper run at Aintree against top horses so he’s got to be competitive again.
Dan
