By his own admission, the days of Grade I winners and high days at Cheltenham for Barbury trainer Alan King, are now few and far between, given the concentration of spending power harnessed by the big guns of the Jumps game. The seemingly never-ending phalanx of owners with six figure budgets scoop up all the best stock at public auction, and Closutton in particular has a network of scouts scourin...

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Enthusiastic owners Clive and Joan Hitchings are based only a few miles from Chaddesley Corbett racecourse and have long wanted a horse good enough to land the prestigious Lady Dudley Cup which takes centre stage on the seven race-card at the Worcestershire venue on Saturday. And their wish may have been granted in the shape of Grace A Vous Enki, who bids to extend his unbeaten sequence to six vi...

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"Quality will out" is a watchword for racing at Aintree nowadays, where the era of long-priced unfancied horses has largely been put to bed by changes to race conditions and the shape of the fences. And perhaps the racing over the National fences is better for that.  That quality was proven yesterday when 3/1 favourite It's On The Line, trained by Emmet Mullins, and ridden by Derek O'Connor,...

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Time Leader and Spyglass offer the best chance of continued home-grown success on the Randox Foxhunter Chase, the second of the three "classics" of the amateur season tomorrow at Aintree.  Twenty-two runners line up for the thrill of a lifetime - a circuit of Aintree's Grand National fences, but rarely nowadays, the ground will be soft or heavy, which always throws up some imponderables. Ti...

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