Our loyal owner, Mrs Penelope
Bridel, was finally rewarded by her horse’s consistency by winning at Newbury
on Saturday 1st March.
Headly’s Bridge has been placed in all his runs this season over hurdles
(a record of 3/3/2/4/2) and was recently only beaten a head at Wincanton in his
latest hurdles race. His run at Newbury
was his first run over fences and he put in a foot perfect round of jumping and
bolted up, being eased down to win by 19 lengths! Andrew Thornton who has a 22% record of rides to wins for our
yard over the last 5 seasons rode him.
We were not afraid to put him over the very big fences at Newbury as he
had schooled so well at home and has plenty of scope and knows how to shorten
his stride especially after all the grid work that he has done. We were lucky that Headly only went up 10lb
and is now rated 130.
Penelope is such a lovely owner
to have and is very patient, and she hopefully has a decent chaser on her
hands. There was one happy man who
benefited from Headly’s win (and his decent price of 14-1) as he had a £2 bet
in a bookies on the scoop 6 and Headly’s Bridge was his final selection so he
won nearly £500,000! It was a wonderful
day and we were all invited up to The Royal Box after the race to have a glass
of champagne (unfortunately The Queen was not in this time!).
Last Thursday 13th
March, Headly’s Bridge won again at Towcester under Paddy Brennan. He was understandably odds on
favourite. He beat a Towcester
specialist by 1 ½ lengths. The ground
there was drying and he coped very well considering. We were lucky to find this race and I call it a ‘free’ win, as
the handicapper hasn't altered his rating for winning! Well done Headly, that is 2 out of 2 over fences.
