Fine chasing debut by Shades of Midnight

The bare form of the race doesn't reflect how pleased connections were with Shades of Midnight's performance today at Carlisle.

5th of 5 beaten just under 5 lengths on this, his debut run over fences. Tracking the leaders, he met the open ditch, 6 from home, wrongly but he soon picked himself up from that minor mistake and was bang in there with a chance jumping 2 out. As we suspected, his lack of peak fitness told at this point and he wasn't able to quicken with the first 3 but kept on from the last under a hands and heels ride.
The race, run at a modest pace, was won by the odds on Brio Conti, but only by a short head!

Over hurdles he often clouted one or two, so Shady impressed us with his fluent jumping over fences, that one slight error apart although he did brush through the top of a couple. This gives us a lot of scope as to the future with the Midnight Legend gelding - he'll be well suited by 3 miles - and we look forward to an exciting season for the Potassium Partnership.

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Shades of Midnight (Pinky) on the left