Paul Webber Racing

After the terrific excitements of EDGBRIAR, AUSTRALIA DAY and FIRM ORDER winning on succesive days, it has been back to meagre reality for the last few days. LASKARI struck into himself below his left front joint at Aintree and is very lucky not to be heading into retirement just quite yet. Another couple of mm. deeper and it may have been curtains. He never looked happy on the softened ground and with the trainer at Stratford and both owners and jockey arriving late due to a horror accident on the M6, so unable to fully assess the conditions, it may have been a mistake to run. CITRUS MARK disappointed and has been found to have hurt his sacro-illiac joint quite badly. MARLEY ROCA was a little too keen, then outpaced and then stayed on again to be fourth, so ran a confusing type of race! KRISTALLO jumped well at Stratford yesterday, his first run over fences but was outpaced. He will win races on better ground, but that will mean waiting for next spring and summer, so he will now go the Doncaster November Sale next week. There he will be joined by ETERNAL CITY, who ran well for a long way to be third on his debut and only start at Ludlow last week and ROCKSTOWN who looked pretty one-paced today at Wetherby. In these days of paltry prize money for ordinary races, it's so important to be realistic and truthful with the owners of horses that will struggle badly to make significant contributions to their training costs. It may mean an empty stable of two, but it still has to be the correct approach.
One horse that I think will make tremendous contributions to his training bill is COIS FARRAIG who makes his chasing debut at Ascot tomorrow (sat.). We make no secret of how much we think of this horse and he schooled and worked very nicely with TIME FOR RUPERT at Towcester this monday. He will appreciate the slight step up in distance and will hopefully show himself to be way above average tomorrow.