Posh Bird

Posh Bird showed her first real form of the season in the three-and-a-quarter-mile veterans’ chase at Newbury on Saturday, staying on well all the way to the line to finish third behind a rejuvenated Michel Le Bon, and Hey Big Spender, who has come back to some form of late with the application of a tongue-tie.

The three-and-a-quarter-mile trip was probably on the sharp side for Posh Bird, and the ground probably on the fast side, and now that she looks to be coming back to form she should do even better over a longer trip or on softer ground.

Second to Portrait King in the Eider Chase in February 2012, she was sent off as favourite for the Midlands National the following month, but she disappointed there. Perhaps that came up too soon after the Eider, just three weeks later, and it was her fourth run in just over two months. This year she has been more lightly campaigned, she has had just three runs this season and just two this calendar year. The worry is that Uttoxeter can be a bit of a specialists’ track and it might pay to tread a little warily if she does go back for that race again this year, for all that it appears to be the obvious race for her now.

Perhaps the Scottish National would suit her better, she handled the good ground here well and the four-mile trip at Ayr would bring her undoubted stamina into play. She would be an interesting outsider if she took her chance at Ayr, she has run well at the track in the past, as long as she wasn’t too far out of the handicap.

2nd March 2013