Nigel Twiston-Davies believes he may have found the jockey to ride for him in better races this season now that his son, Sam, is not always available to him. Jamie Moore delivered a Grade Two success for the trainer aboard Blaklion at Chepstow on Saturday and has been offered the chance to follow up on Double Ross in this weekend’s Charlie Hall Chase at Wetherby.
“We’ve got two very good young lads here in Ryan Hatch and Jamie Bargary,” Twiston-Davies said on Monday. “But the question is what you do when you’ve got races in which they can’t claim.” The relative inexperience of both those jockeys means they are allowed to claim a few pounds off the weight to be carried by their mounts but that leniency does not extend to the better quality races.
“I’m hoping Jamie can ride a few for us,” the trainer continued. “He’s one of the best about at the moment, a jockey’s jockey, and that was his first winner for us on Saturday.
“He rides mostly for his father [Gary] but his brother [Joshua] is there as well, so Jamie can get off some of his father’s and ride for us. I’ve offered him the ride on Double Ross.”
Moore said on Monday night that, while he hoped to take the ride, he would have to go wherever his father needed him most for the time being. Joshua is presently sidelined by a shoulder injury but hopes to be back in action in a fortnight’s time, at which point Jamie will be more free to take outside rides.
Twiston-Davies has used his son as stable jockey for the past three seasons but Sam has now landed the coveted job as principal jockey to Paul Nicholls, meaning Sam’s father will be competing against him for much of the season. The only certain exception to that rule is The New One, a Champion Hurdle prospect which Sam will continue to ride.
Double Ross won two valuable Cheltenham handicaps last season and was a close third in a Grade One novice chase at the Cheltenham Festival. Twiston-Davies wants to use the Charlie Hall to find out whether the chestnut stays three miles, in which case the season’s very biggest prizes would become legitimate targets.
The Wetherby race, seen by many as signalling the start of serious jump racing each season, looks hot, with First Lieutenant, Taquin Du Seuil and Nicholls’ Silviniaco Conti among those entered. “But he’s pretty hot himself,” Twiston-Davies said of Double Ross. “He’s rated in the 150s and those Nicholls horses have been needing their first runs.”
Otherwise Twiston-Davies expects this weekend to be “very quiet”. Although he has a couple of headline horses, he reports that his string of 60 are “mostly young ones”. “We haven’t got the strength in depth this time.”
But Blaklion could be a new standard-bearer for his Gloucestershire stable this season, following his defeat of Nicholls’ Vicente in the Persian War on Saturday. The five-year-old will be aimed at the next Cheltenham meeting in a fortnight’s time and his trainer hopes he could be the type to line up for the Albert Bartlett at the Festival in March.
Silviniaco Conti was made the 7-4 favourite as betting opened on the Charlie Hall, a race he won two years ago. Fans of jump racing must now hope the going does not prove too fast for connections of the star names to allow them to run. The going is currently good with limited rain in the forecast, prompting course officials to put down 10mm in irrigation.
Very Wood, winner of the Albert Bartlett at the last Festival, made a winning start to his new career as a chaser at Galway on Monday, albeit not quite with the ease that odds of 1-2 suggested. “He’s loads of scope and jumped well but would probably be better on a more galloping track,” said his jockey, Bryan Cooper. “He got the job done and chasing will be his game.”
