The week that was 27th January - 2nd Feb

Cheltenham hosted its annual trials day ahead of the best week of the year in March and as usual threw up a few interesting clues.

Thankfully Jenkins was not running this week so I can breathe easy and can focus on making a fool of myself in other ways.


In the Triumph Hurdle trial it was Apples Shakira who eventually got her hips going and won by 8 lengths on going that would have been unsuitable, there is talk that she might go for the mares novice hurdle instead but "wherever whenever" she turns up, in this punters eyes she is going to be top of the pops.

The north of the country has had a decent few weeks to show its not all grim up here, and Definitly Red continued the trend by winning the Cotswold Chase, his Geordie trainer has always dreamt of winning the Northumberland plate but winning the Gold Cup would ensure that the town would be Definitly painted red!

How does the song go?? here come the girls... well they stole the show on Saturday winning two big races, first arguably the find of the season Bryony Frost - the second woman to win a grade 1 over jumps,  showed all her class on Frodon to sneak up the rail with a great run to win by a street, not to be outdone however was Lizzie Kelly - incidentally the first to win a grade 1 over jumps, came with a great run on Agrapart to win the cleeve hurdle.

I mentioned last week that Toast Of New York was out in California catching a few rays and trying to win millions of dollars - unfortunately nothing seemed to go right for him and he trailed in last - however his trainer has 100% faith he will win another big one, but on this occasion there was no fizz in this toast.