SAILING GRACE made the perfect start to her career with a narrow success at Newton Abbot on Saturday in the Happy 70th Birthday Ian Weaver Junior “National Hunt” Hurdle.
It’s a welcome new series for unraced three year olds and I’ve had the one at Newton Abbot earmarked for Sailing Grace for a few weeks.
Ridden by Ben Godfrey, she was on and off the bridle and extremely green, which can often happen on debut, but was prominent the whole way and found a good jump at the last flight before keeping on well to hold the challenge of Jupiter Allen by half a length.
She did quite a lot last season once broken in last December, has a lovely attitude and has been schooling nicely upsides on grass.
I’m sure Sailing Grace will improve plenty for the run and she will stay in this series as she can remain a novice for next season even though she has already won a hurdle race.
I doubt she wants too much racing at this stage and she is unlikely to be out again before running at Ludlow in December in a fillies version of this series.
I bought Sailing Grace as a two year old and although she ran in my own colours on Saturday, she is for sale to stay in the yard.
She has an attractive pedigree and is out of a useful mare War Creation who won three times from eight starts and reached a career high mark of 117. She is the first National Hunt runner by Queen Elizabeth II’s stallion DARTMOUTH – and we named her in reference to that town – the place where the Queen is said to have fallen in love with her future husband, the Duke of Edinburgh, at the Naval Academy.
