Marcus Townend gets the lowdown from Kim Bailey on his team for the new jumps season.
It is exciting times at Kim Bailey’s Thorndale Farm stable close to Cheltenham.
The bulk of his string are young horses, many of whom will be aiming to build on the promise they have shown and the season has started well with a dozen winners on the board already.
Heading the team is Chianti Classico, winner of the Ultima Chase at the Cheltenham Festival in March, who is penciled in to return at Ascot on Saturday.
His long-term aim is the Grand National, which Bailey won in 1990 with Mr Frisk, at Aintree in April.
There has been change in the jockey department with Tom Bellamy appointed as Bailey’s No 1 jockey after an amicable parting of the ways with long-time ally David Bass.
Bailey said: ‘‘In the last two years I have been trying desperately hard to buy nice horses. and they are healthy and well. We haven’t got a full yard but we have nice owners and good horses and I am looking forward to the season.
‘‘Tom Bellamy is my stable jockey. I miss David’s banter when he is not here because we were complete opposites but got on really well.
‘‘But as one door closes, another one opens. Tom has been involved here for a long time. I have photographs of him riding out when he was 13. His step-mother used to be my secretary. There is a big connection and I am delighted he is here.’’
AMAZING CLENI
He is unraced and is one we have minded. He is a nice horse who has had a wind operation since last season. He is owned by the Two For Gold team and is his replacement. They have been very patient with him and I think he will be quite a nice horse. He will go down the Bumper route.
She won a handicap hurdle nicely at Ludlow on her comeback. She will go to Exeter on November 10 for a mares’ race. She will jump a fence. We thought that might be this season but we will probably keep her over hurdles.
He is quite nice and a good stayer in the making. He will plod on forever and a race like the Devon National will suit him.
An exciting horse that the owners have been very patient with. Willie Mullins was underbidder when we bought him at last year’s Horses In Training sale and he said, ‘if he were mine, he’d be out in a field for the winter’. We did that indirectly because he suffered a hairline fracture.
He is fine now. He was a stayer on the Flat for Ralph Beckett but he will start off over two miles. He is about a month away from a run. He works like a Flat horse against old jumpers.
I think he is a lovely horse and I can’t believe I haven’t sold him. It is the old story. If you own him yourself and he has been in training for two years, people think something is wrong with him.
He was very backward and weak and I have given him all the time in the world. He is by a good sire out of a good mare. He was unlucky not to win him Bumper when second at Huntingdon in April because he was very green. He bolted up on his hurdles debut at Ludlow. He will be novice hurdling.
He will run at Ascot this weekend all being well and we are praying they will put enough water on because there doesn’t seem much rain coming. How he gets on will push us in the direction we go.
The ultimate aim is to run in the Grand National and he could go for the Becher Chase at Aintree in December. I think he will run well at Ascot but if he were to win by 10 lengths, which I don’t think he will for one second, he goes up another gear and we may have to start thinking about other races. It is hard to say he has improved from one season to the next but he is in really good nick.
After he won the Ultima Chase at last season’s Cheltenham Festival he finished fourth in the Grade One Mildmay Novices’ Chase at Aintree but it was possibly not his jockey’s finest ride, he should have finished second.
We knew he was probably in too deep and had been trained for Cheltenham but we thought we would give it a try to see, He is a horse which does not take a lot of racing. He is a four or five run a season horse. If we definitely go down the Grand National route he would miss the Cheltenham Festival.’’
He is a lovely horse and he is a chaser, not a hurdler. He is a son of Milan which we bought at the Cheltenham February sale. I really like him. He won a 2m 7f novice hurdle at Worcester on his debut for us in October. He has a lovely attitude, but you won’t see the best of him until he goes over fences.
He had a brilliant season in novice hurdles and it was very pleasing on his comeback when he won the same novices’ handicap chase at Chepstow that Chianti Classico won last year. We are hoping to follow the same route that we took with him.
Tom Bellamy gave him a very good ride and was patient on him and the horse enjoyed himself. He can’t go to Ascot next as the race Chianti Classico ran in next is no longer there so he will probably go for a novice handicap at Newbury’s Coral Gold Cup meeting. He is a very similar horse to Chianti Classico, not very big, but he is a progressive horse.
Ran very well on his comeback when fourth at Cheltenham’s first meeting. He is a very quirky individual and he ran well last season. He went down the handicap a little and it was always the idea that he would go for the Grimthorpe Chase at Doncaster in March which he won when showing all his old sparkle.
He is such a small horse everywhere he goes he gets top weight in handicaps and he carried 12st on his comeback.
He is a remarkable horse. I think he is the only horse sired by Alkaased who has ever won but he was bred by Mick Easterby so he is bound to be a freak!
The Grimthorpe is a possible target again. He becomes eligible for veteran chases after Christmas but he will be out of those because he is too high in the handicap at the moment. Like Two For Gold, every time they run well they go up two or three pounds. It puts them just outside the 0-150 bracket when these horses should be encouraged to keep going.
He will run in a Bumper at Ascot on Saturday. He has been bought by Chianti Classico’s owners and he is very similar. Hopefully, he will follow a similar path. Chianti Classico started off in the same Bumper and finished second. This horse will run well when he goes in Bumpers and he will stick to them this season.
He had a fibrillating heart problem last season. He went to Huntingdon on his comeback run with a view to retiring him if he didn’t show anything. He had always been a nice horse but fibrillating hearts are a problem.
Obviously, he won very well. We have given him time to get over it and, touch wood, he is fine. He has to go right-handed. He took the wing out at Huntingdon. We went left-handed in hurdle at Chepstow once and he fell at the last when clear but it was only because he was hanging. He is due to run again soon. He is very talented.
It is early days with him. He was a Million In Mind horse for Oliver Sherwood, who won with him at Market Rasen and Catterick in the 2021-2 season. He has had two runs over fences and pulled up twice. He is new to us. He is big and scopey and has schooled well but we are a month away from really finding out about him.
He won a two and a half mile maiden hurdle at Chepstow last season. He is very talented and will go chasing. He wants soft ground and needs to go left-handed. He will run when the ground is right for him. I think he is alright.
He is one I like. He injured himself when he landed steeply and unseated his jockey at Worcester in a novice hurdle in October last year. He is back in work now.
The sad thing about him is I bought him for a friend and he was diagnosed with cancer shortly after and died without ever even seeing him. It all happened very quickly.
He left money in his Will for him and his family have kept him. I said I was buying a chaser, not a hurdler. He has shown ability in hurdles but he was always going to be a chaser. He won very easily on his chasing debut at Worcester in October but, unfortunately, the handicapper has put him up 11lb. He is still immature so should be progressive.
Won hurdles at Chepstow and Ffos Las last year. He is entered at Chepstow on Tuesday. I thought he ran really well first time over fences when he was second at Exeter. He slightly went to the last fence and thought, ‘these are big fences.’ If he hadn’t have done that he would have won. He is a progressive, out-and-out chaser who will stay forever. He will be capable of winning long-distance chases somewhere down the line.
He is a four-year-old winning point-to-pointer by Doyen who will go straight over hurdles. It is too early to say what he is like. We liked him a month ago but he has had a slight hiccup and he hasn’t quite got back to where he was.
He was due to run last weekend but got kicked while turned out in the afternoon. He is fine but it will take him a few weeks to get over it. He is quirky but talented. He won a handicap chase at Southwell in May and has been beaten twice since, breaking a blood vessel last time out at Stratford. He is capable of winning races.
He was a horse who people said would never win a race and when he won a 3m 1f handicap chase at Warwick in November last year I wasn’t sure who was making most noise as he went past the post, me or Ciaran Gethings! He couldn’t believe the horse had won a race either.
It was almost as exciting moment as winning the Gold Cup because I always predicted he would win and no-one would believe me.
He has now won three and there is nothing to stop him from winning another three. It will be low-level races but he is OK.
He is a horse which has really frustrated me because I love him. When I bought him at the sales, I asked Derek O’Connor about him and he said he was really nice. After I bought him, Derek asked me why I had and I said, ‘A, because he is a really nice horse and, B, he reminds me of Mr Frisk’. Derek said, ‘Who’s Mr Frisk,’!
I am longing for him to be a good horse so I can tell the story. He won a hurdle race very impressively at Ffos Las in November 2022 and everything has gone wrong for him since.
He has stacks of ability and jumps very well. He loves soft ground and is due to go back to Ffos Las early in November. Whenever anybody asks me what is the horse to follow in the yard I say him because I genuinely believe if things go right for him he has got it.
He is an English point-to-pointer, who ran well at Huntingdon when fourth in a bumper and third in a maiden hurdle. He jumps very well. He will eventually be a stayer but we will stick to two miles for now.
SO YOU KNOW
He is a half-brother to Does He Know bought at the Goffs Arkle sale. He has just come in the yard. I am rather hoping he will be forward enough to run in sales Bumper at this season’s Punchestown Festival that he qualifies to run in.
He could run at Stratford on Thursday, again if it the ground soft enough. He needs that as he has great big feet! He had a good season last year. He should have won four time but did win two at Leicester and Wetherby. He got beaten in photographs in the other two. He is probably at the top end of his handicap but he had a lovely spin around Aintree when 14th in the Topham Chase in April and he has an entry for the Grand Sefton Chase back there in November.
He won what was probably one of the hottest novice hurdles run so far this season when he beat Jurancon, who David Pipe couldn’t see getting beaten, at Worcester. I had a special interest because I nearly bought Jurancon last year. He was being sold by the person who sold me Chianti Classico and he was begging me to buy him.
The Kemble Brewery, who won his two Bumpers, is lucky to be alive because he got a cut near to a tendon after he made a bad mistake in a maiden hurdle at Cheltenham in November last year. He was in his box for six months getting over it.
But fate is a funny thing and it has turned out to be a blessing in disguise. It gave him time and he is a different horse now, stronger horse and more relaxed. Last year he was very buzzy. He has a rather interesting handicap mark so everything is up in the air at the moment. I’d like to win an ordinary race again first at a little racecourse before stepping him up.
He is named after a pub in Cheltenham and owned by locals so you can imagine where they would like to go! He is a smashing horse. Interestingly, his sire Blue Bresil has a lot of winners but very few chasers. There are a lot of hurdlers and they have speed. This horse has the size but I am not sure he will make a chaser although it is too early to find out yet.
He is supposed to be going to Carlisle, where he won on his seasonal debut last season, next weekend for the Colin Parker Intermediate Chase which we won with Imperial Aura in 2020 but he needs soft ground.
He ran well in a hot Cheltenham novice chase last season and was second in the Towton Novices’ Chase at Wetherby before falling at the second in the Ultima Handicap Chase at the Cheltenham Festival.
He is a very talented individual but has his own quirks. He has been going really well at home and has a lot of ability.
He is due to run in the £100,000 three-mile handicap chase at Ascot on Saturday in which he was second last year. He loves Ascot and has never run a bad race there. He will probably go to every meeting there – the owner has a box!
This will be his last season and it will be lovely if we can win a race with him. His rating puts him on the cusp of Veteran Chases but there are none for him at the moment.
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