An early morning schooling session on Tuesday paid off for AVOIR DE SOINS (French for ‘have care’) who gained his first success a few hours later at Lingfield in the 2m 4f attheraces.com Handicap Chase.
A whole host of issues have prevented him putting his best foot forward and I didn’t really know what to expect after his first fence tumble at Plumpton eight days earlier.
So I felt it made sense for Rex Dingle to pop him over half a dozen fences first thing before we boxed him up for the trip to Surrey.
Avoir De Soins is a good looking, robust son of Flemensfirth and because of various frustrating issues that he has had he was starting this season on what we felt was a workable mark in a low key handicap Chase over two and a half miles.
Rex dropped him in towards the rear, gave him plenty of time to warm to the task and brought him with a thrilling late run from the last fence to land the spoils.
I’m so pleased that his enthusiastic owners Richard and Shirl Smith made the journey to Lingfield to support Avoir De Soins. They have shown massive patience with both the horse and us, and have never complained as one setback followed another.
They were determined to leave no stone unturned to give him a chance to show he was a racehorse and if he had finished third they would have been besides themselves.
To watch him win as he did was the least Richard and Shirl deserved and given the way he stormed home there is no reason why he can’t go on and triumph again at a similar level.
It just goes to show what can be achieved when a stable is in top form. Avoir De Soins was our eleventh individual winner during our current golden spell.
