Trainer Nicky Henderson has been among the Cheltenham Festival winners all week and tomorrow looks to add to his tally as well as landing the £20,000 feature on Fakenham’s six-race card.
Spectators will be able to watch the Cheltenham action, including the Gold Cup, on screens at the north Norfolk course which is staging its newly-branded Country Food Trust Raceday.
That means racegoers will also be able to see a gun dog display before racing and learn more about the Country Food Trust which is a charity that enables shot game birds (pheasant and partridge) to be processed into a curry or stew and distributed and given free to food banks and charities that help feed the homeless and those in food poverty.
The CFT Fakenham Silver Cup Handicap Hurdle at 4.35pm has attracted 13 runners and Henderson has the market leader in four-year-old Sea The Stars gelding Homer. Homer, for whom James Bowen is booked to ride, won at Kempton early in February and can take his chance off a handy mark before he is due to rise nine pounds in the ratings in the near future.
Main rivals in the competitive looking two-miler are Ashutor and Movie Legend. The former, a grey gelding trained by Paul Nicholls, is up five pounds after a Catterick victory and has Katie O’Farrell in the saddle.
Movie Legend, a 10-year-old from Lucy Wadham’s Newmarket base, won at the course in October 2018 and is seven pounds better off than his last run, a fourth placing at Doncaster.
The action starts at 1.55pm with five in the claiming hurdle which looks between Coole Well from Jamie Snowden’s yard and Olly Murphy’s Swaffham Bulbeck, a Fakenham winner at the same meeting last year.
Before Bowen’s ride on Homer, he partners top weight Echiquer for Nigel Twiston-Davies in the Prince Carlton Chase at 2.35pm, the main threat being Harry Fry’s Onefortheroadtom.
The Robert Case Memorial Maiden at 3.15pm has an interesting hurdling debutant in Medalla De Oro under James Neild for Harry Whittington while 10 go in the 3.55pm Walter Wales Memorial Hurdle, favourite for which is Starsky for O’Farrell and Nicholls.
The 5.10pm finale, the five-runner Robert Hoare Memorial Hunter Chase, could go to Full Irish for Jack Andrews and trainer David Phelan.
Words by Terry Redhead.
Selections: 1.55pm Swaffham Bulbeck, 2.35pm Echiquer, 3.15pm Medalla De Oro, 3.55pm Josie Abbing, 4.35pm Homer, 5.10pm Full Irish.
