Horse racing: High quality field for Perth Festival

Apr 21 2009 by Alison Anderson, Perthshire Advertiser Tuesday

THE winning trainer of this year’s Grand National winner, the 2007 winner of the ultimate steeplechase and the current leading National Hunt trainers from both sides of the Irish Sea are some of the big names with entries for the Perth Festival at picturesque Perth Racecourse tomorrow, Thursday and Friday.

This year will be the 20th year of the Perth Festival at the Scone Palace Park racecourse, and with more than £220,000 of prize money to be won this week, the quality of horses entered is the best-ever.

Thursday’s feature race in particular – the three-mile Stan James.com Festival Chase – has spurred trainers into entering some of their top charges. The 27 entries (although there is no certainty that all horses entered will line-up at the start) includes 2007 Grand National winner Silver Birch, who was travelling well in this year’s race when falling at Becher’s second time round.

Silver Birch is trained by leading Irish National Hunt trainer Gordon Elliott who, along with Tony Martin, heads the Irish contingent coming to Perth for the racing and partying.

Venetia Williams, trainer of Grand National winner Mon Mome, trainers’ champion Paul Nicholls, Nicky Henderson, David Pipe, and Nigel Twiston-Davies are also sending plenty of runners from the south of England to the Perth Festival.

Local trainers are also turning out in force, including Scottish champion trainer-in-waiting Lucinda Russell and Lucy and Alan Normile.

Lucinda, who will re-gain the top Scottish trainer crown at the end of the current National Hunt season on April 30, has some 50 horses in training at Arlary House Stables, Milnathort, many of which will be Perth-bound this week.

She explained the appeal of her home track: “This meeting has a high grade of racing so we’ll be having a few runners every day.

“The fantastic thing about Perth is they always get the ground right, so I am happy to run good quality horses

“We’re having a superb season, with lots of winners including at the bigger meetings like Cheltenham and Aintree.”

One of the Lucinda-trained horses entered for Perth is Silver By Nature, owned and bred by St Johnstone chairman and local businessman, Geoff Brown. Another is promises young chaser, Et Maintenant, a winner at Ayr last month.

Horses with the shortest distance to travel to Perth Racecourse are those trained at Duncrievie near Glenfarg by Lucy Normile – daughter of Perth Racecourse chairman David Whitaker – and her husband, Alan.

“We hope to have about 15 or so runners over the three days of the Perth Festival,” said Alan.

“I really like sending runners to our local track because of the good prize money and the good going, and also because a lot of our owners are local and they all want to go to Perth. We’ve had a few winners there, and it could be nice to have some more!.

“The yard is all geared up for this week. This is our Cheltenham!”

Today the Perth Racecourse team will be putting the finishing touches to have the course in tip-top condition for the season’s opening meeting.

General Manager Sam Morshead said: “The course is looking good for what will be three very busy days of racing. The ground is in great condition and we were watering over the weekend.

“There are some very exciting horses entered, particularly for the feature race. This is a new type of race based on weight for age. It was the idea of the BHB (British Horseracing Board) to put on a race like this, and I am delighted with the response from trainers.”

Sam added that it was tremendous and very rewarding how the Perth Festival had grown from the initial idea 20 years ago of an end-of-season party for owners, trainers, jockeys and stable staff into three days of very competitive racing.

He urged racegoers to make their way to the racecourse in plenty of time before racing gets underway at 2..10pm each day. Gates open at noon.