My Moment

My Moment put up a sparkling display of jumping to land a really decent two-mile beginners’ chase at Warwick on Sunday. Sent to the front from flagfall by Andrew Tinkler, Trevor Hemmings’s gelding had a bit of a coming together with Aigle D’Or over the second fence, but after that he was foot perfect. Kicked into each of the three fences going away from the stands, he pinged all three of them and turned at the end of that stretch with a nice advantage, which enabled Tinkler allow the horse fill his lungs on the long run around to the back straight. By the time they reached the first of the line of fences down the back, the well-backed, odds-on favourite Copper Bleu had closed to within two lengths, but he had to do a fair bit of running to close that gap. My Moment’s jumping was again very good down the back straight. Copper Bleu made a slight mistake at the fourth and last fence down the back straight, and suddenly My Moment was three lengths clear. It wasn’t in the leader’s favour that they by-passed the fifth fence in the back straight, but he still had a lead of a length and a half when they straightened up for home. Copper Bleu closed to with a half a length by the time they reached the second last, and he may even have picked up marginally in front at the last, but another good jump there by My Moment, combined with a bit of a dive at the fence by the favourite, saw the Trevor Hemmings horse emerge with a two-length advantage on the landing side, and he kept on really well up the home straight to win by four. This was a really useful performance by the winner in what looked like a good beginners’ chase beforehand. Okay, so second favourite Aigle D’Or, last season’s Greatwood Hurdle runner-up, was weak in the market beforehand and ran disappointingly, but Copper Bleu was very well supported, and he set a fair standard, a top novice hurdler last season, beaten just a head in the Grade 2 Mersey Hurdle at Aintree in April and already with a fair run over fences on his cv from last month. The front pair pulled clear of their field and the time was good, three and a half seconds faster than the Class 3 handicap chase that was run over the same course and distance later on the card, and they didn’t hang about in the early stages of that race.

My Moment had also had one run over fences before Sunday, a really encouraging run to finish second to last season’s Imperial Cup winner, the highly regarded Dave’s Dream at Huntingdon last month when he shaped with a great deal of promise. He wasn’t a top class hurdler, he was rated just 129 in that sphere, but he wasn’t bad, he did beat Fairyland in his maiden hurdle at Aintree last November, and he wasn’t beaten far by Trafalgar Road at Market Rasen last March. However, he is a super jumper and he should prove to be a fair bit better over the larger obstacles than over the small ones. He did jump a little to his right here, so he may be even better on a right-handed track. He handles soft ground well, there is no reason to deviate away from two miles on easy ground on this evidence, and he should be well able to step up in grade now.

6th December 2009