Happy New Year & Musselburgh

Happy New Year folks, and very best wishes for 2025 to you all from everyone here at Hazelrigg.

We kick off a busy few days for the yard with two really good chances of a winner at Musselburgh’s sell-out New Year’s Day card.

Anyone who’s kept up to speed with my blog in recent weeks will know we’ve had the Auld Reekie Handicap Chase as a target for BREIZH RIVER (2.20) for some time. I’ve been itching to step up him up to 2m4f for quite a while now and this £40,000 handicap looks the ideal time to do it.

Ryan Mania, who rode him for the first time in the Cheltenham Grade 2 novice won by L’Eau Du Sud in November, came down to school him yesterday. All went well, and I can honestly say we’ve never had him looking as healthy and as well as he does right now. Breizh that is, although Ryan wasn’t looking too shabby either!

It’s a decent race for the money, as you’d expect. And I reckon we’ll see a few of these back for the Scottish Champion Chase, which this season is worth £100,000, at Musselburgh’s Trials Weekend in early February. Hopefully Briezh River will be one of those. And hopefully he’ll be going back there with a 1 next to his name.

Before that, we’ve also have OKAVANGO DELTA (1.10) heading back to a track he’s taken really well to this winter. His jumping was good when he beat Divas Doyen, who lines up against him once more, over this same track and trip in November.

Although I thought a 6lb rise for that win was harsh enough, he ran another cracker when second to Ribeye over 3m at Musselburgh’s last meeting three weeks ago.

A couple of sloppy jumps down the home straight cost him, but not because he was getting tired or didn’t stay that new, longer trip. I thought Danny McMenamin, who was on Ribeye, rode an excellent race, seizing an opportunity to pen us in against the fence and getting first run. The mistakes our lad then made at three out and two out were a result of being on the back foot and having to chase the game.

He’s come out of the race well, really fresh and fit, and dropping back to 2m4f won’t be a bother to him. I actually think it suits him better jumping off the slightly quicker pace you get for race over this intermediate trip. When the pace slowed up mid-race last time, he just lacked a bit of fluency.

We’ll be positive on him once more and Craig Nichol, who knows him really well now, will give him a good attacking ride. As long as the ground doesn’t get too soft, I expect him to run another solid race.