10 March 2008 Leicester - Mallard HC & Thrusters HC
Oliver Greenall tuned up for his Cheltenham Foxhunter ride on Amicelli by winning the Mallard Pawnbrokers Hunter Chase on the Paul Nicholls-trained Le Passing. Oliver had been due to partner Holy Joe, jointly-owned, like Le Passing, by his father, but switched mounts when Venetia Williams's charge was pulled out due to the ground being too fast for him.
Le Passing may now head to Liverpool for another crack at the Fox Hunters, in which he fell at Bechers last year, but wherever he goes next, "He can still give the Greenall boys a lot of fun," said Nicholls's representative Harry Fry, himself a former successful Point-to-Point rider and now a pupil-assistant with the champion trainer.
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Gemma Hutchinson, who teaches at a school about 20 minutes away from the racecourse, had managed to escape the classroom early in order to ride Wild Is The Wind, but found herself on the wrong end of disciplinary procedures when she was given a two-day ban for misuse of the whip. "It was still worth missing school for," she admitted after finishing runner-up to Le Passing.
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Overheard - a weighing-room official, when asked if the day had gone smoothly, "Yes, it's good having the amateurs here. They do as they're told."
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Charlie Huxley, who has been attracting favourable attention for his exploits under Rules, rode his first double, initiated in the Amateur Riders' Chase on William Butler, and completed in the Thrusters Hunter Chase on Only Dreams.
"These two are for grandfather," said Charlie, grandson of former jockey Roy Edwards, who has not been at all well and is currently in hospital.
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Former trainer Nick Lampard changed tack a few years ago to become a landscape gardener, but showed he has not lost the ability to send out a winner when the one horse now in his yard, Howard and Annabel Spooner's Only Dreams, quickened away from the opposition on the run-in to land the two-miler.
Backed in to 28-1 from his morning price of 100-1, Only Dreams, said Nick, "wouldn't get three miles in a horsebox," so sub-3m contests at the Cheltenham and Folkestone Hunter Chase meetings are being mooted as future targets.