Jubilee Alpha
Jubilee Alpha put up a really good performance on her seasonal return to finish second behind Sweet Caryline in the two-mile-five-and-a-half-furlong mares' handicap hurdle at Wincanton on Saturday. Held up early on by Harry Cobden, she travelled really well through her race and her jumping was very good. Still seventh of seven as they left the back straight, she cut through her field early in the home straight to move up on the outside of the leader on the run to the second last flight. She got that obstacle wrong however, her only real mistake in the race. It was a real momentum-checker just as Sweet Caryline was winding it up off a sedate pace from the front. Jubilee Alpha did well to recover her equilibrium and get back out after the leader, but Sweet Caryline is a talented hurdler herself, to whom she was conceding almost two stone, and who was well-positioned and who had race fitness on her side and, while she pulled well clear of the remainder of the field, she failed by a length to reel the leader back in.
The runner-up is a talented mare. Second in the Grade 2 mares' bumper at Aintree in 2024, she won twice in the early part of last season, and she was sent off as third favourite for the Mares' Novices' Hurdle at Cheltenham, in which she could only finish eighth. She proved that run to be wrong next time, however, and she proved that she could operate at Cheltenham, when she won a listed mares' novices' hurdle back there in April, when she saw out the extended two-and-a-half-mile trip well. She is only six and she has raced just six times over hurdles, so there is every chance that she will progress again this season.
Wincanton, 8th November 2025
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