JURANCON was a welcome winner at Newbury on Saturday, his third win of the season on his first try in handicap company. His form figures for us now read 12121211 in his career so as you can see he is a very nice horse who always runs his race. He won this race off a mark of 127 and did things pretty comfortably.

Jurancon was our 46th winner of the 2024-25 National Hunt season and draws us level with winners for last year’s total. We are well ahead on prize money won and with just under two months left until the end of this season, I would hope we can add a few more to the tally.

Pachacuti returned to form to be second at Newbury on Friday while Walkadina ran a good race to fill the same position at Ludlow the day before.

River Run Free could not complete his hat trick of chase wins at Leicester last week, finishing a close fourth this time. He returned from the race not quite himself and is a reason for a below par effort. We will get him right and he can resume winning ways in due course.

It is a quiet start to the week for us with our first runners likely to be on Thursday. Lock Out is an intended runner in the conditional jockeys chase at Wincanton and Ben Bromley will ride. He ran well to be second at Hereford last time and will enjoy the sunshine forecast this week and drying ground.

At Fontwell, Saccary will run in the maiden hurdle while we have Royal Mer, Activist, Jaipaletemps and Bras D’or entered on the card. The latter is a lovely young horse who will carry the famous colours of owner J P McManus and he has settled in well to life at Pond House. On Friday, we have entries at Exeter and Leicester.

While the countdown to the Cheltenham Festival next week is well and truly on, Windbeneathmywings will not be heading to the Champion Bumper on Wednesday. One of the favourites for the race since bolting up at Ascot before Christmas we were very much looking forward to seeing him in action but sadly, he has suffered a setback.

Gericault Roque is in good form at home and has two entries next week, in the National Hunt Chase on Tuesday (12/1) and the Kim Muir (16/1) on Thursday. Runner up at the Festival in 2022 he has only been in seen three times since which includes a third place in the December Gold Cup at Newbury that year.

King Turgeon holds an entry in the Ultima chase at Cheltenham on Tuesday. Plan A was to run at Doncaster last Saturday but unfortunately he was a non-runner after pricking his foot the day before. Thankfully he has taken no time at all to recover and he was back full of beans on the gallops on Monday morning.

Perhaps he was telling us he wanted to go to Cheltenham! I shall be discussing options with his owners before the confirmation stage later this week but he is another who will appreciate the drying conditions this week and at 16/1 for the race he may well take his chance.

Dave Pipe’s column as told to Richard Walsh