And so onto Ayr, Wednesday

A 7 race card at Ayr on Wednesday with an advance going description of good to soft but rain is forecast.

Couple of runners from Dodlands, starting with Enemy At The Gate (Henry Brooke) in the 3.35pm, a 2 mile novices' handicap hurdle (0-110) with 9 runners. After missing most of last season, Enemy At The Gate had a nice introduction over course and distance just after New Year. He's come out of that race well and was allocated an official mark of OR98. Naturally, given the circumstances, we've been taking our time with this good looking son of Fame And Glory and would imagine that he'll still be in need of another outing or two before becoming truly competitive.

Todhunter's recent C&D scorer Fia Fuinidh will be fancied to follow up but that victory came on heavy ground and this gelding does have a round action so he would appear to be in need of as much rain as possible on the day. On good to soft ground he may be vulnerable.

And one horse who may be poised to snatch the opportunity is Lucinda's lightly raced One Mill Harbour, who improved on his debut run when 3rd to L Anamour a couple of weeks ago. If this improvement continues, he will go close.
The Ewart-Hughes combo with the ex-Irish Thistle Ask is another right there in the mix especially on the best of his form across the Irish Sea.

Enemy At The Gate

And finally, the bumper at 4.10pm where Both Barrels (Craig Nichol) takes on 10 opponents. As National Hunt Flat Races are concerned, this seems a fairly wide open event.

Olly Murphy sends up the un-raced Malinas gelding Booster Bob whose dam is a half-sister to several winners to only a fair level though, but these do include bumper victories.
Like our gelding several of those with previous racecourse experience have shown potential.
The 3rd in Chalk That Down's debut run when runner up to Blue Baloo won the other day, and from the McCain-Hughes stable he'll be strongly fancied to go one better.
In a similar vein, Lucinda's Idem ran 3rd in an Ayr bumper last April and the form of that race has been franked by winning performances of several of the participants. On that evidence, he looks likely to fill the frame.

We were very pleased with the debut run of Both Barrels over this course & distance at the end of November. He ran quite green that day but did knuckle down again to run on into 3rd place. He could sneak into a place again here.

Best of luck to Craig and owner Ann Marshall.

Both Barrels