CLOSE on the heels of the first Newton Abbot meeting of the new season on the last Saturday in May came the second, on Tuesday last week.
The feature race, and the most valuable on the card at £10,000 to the winner, also makes Newton Abbot truly unique. The One and Only Handicap Hunters' 'Chase is just that, being the only race for Hunt-qualified horses that is run anywhere on a handicap basis.
This was the third time the race has been run, under different names, and for the third time it went to one of the less fancied competitors. In 2000, the inaugural year, the race was won by the lightly-weighted Bullens Bay at 16-1. Track O'Profit won last year at 20-1 and this latest running went to Justin Mac who started the 7-1 fourth favourite in a field of six.
Justin Mac was left clear four out by a bad blunder from the favourite Epsilo de la Ronce and won unchallenged by a distance. The 11-year-old winner is trained at Shifnal in Shropshire by Heather Dalton and was ridden by Ben Shaw.
The other Hunter 'chase on the card, the South West Champion Hunters' 'Chase was, as the name once again makes clear, restricted to horses registered with Devon or Cornwall hunts. This also fell to an outsider in Blazing Miracle, who won from the Buckfastleigh stable of Gordon Chambers. Ten-to-one shot Blazing Miracle's rider, Bob Woollacott, was following up his Saturday success on Jabiru and the trainer had saddled the winner of this corresponding race in the last two years with Lead Story. The winning mare took it up on the run in to beat Bomba Charger by one-and-three-quarter lengths.
Trainer Martin Pipe, absent on holiday, scored a double in contrasting styles. Golden Alpha took the double in the Newton Abbot Town Council Golden Jubilee Novices' 'Chase at the prohibitive odds of 2-11, with the minimum of fuss after making all. Pipe tends to farm these summer jumping novices' classes with highly-rated hurdlers of the previous season, though he did suffer a reverse with Stormez three days earlier.
Pipe's other winner, on the other hand, came in the form of Epicure, a five-year-old making his debut for the stable in the Summer Jumping Novices' Hurdle. Mrs Belinda Harvey's French-bred, who had shown only moderate form for his previous stable, drifted out to 14-1 but came from behind under Gerry Supple to beat his McCoy-ridden stable companion Delaware by half-a-length. The 30-100 favourite Old Marsh finished third after a mistake at the last, though he may have been beaten anyway.
Tony McCoy had better luck with the aforementioned Golden Alpha and with the Ron Hodges-trained stalwart Morstock, who followed up an Exeter Mayday win with success in the Taxifast Handicap 'Chase.
Ron Hodges also secured a double as his Celtic Justice, who was better off in the Happy 40th Birthday Tina Swift Selling Hurdle than he would have been in a handicap, took advantage to win by an easy 13 lengths from 50-1 shot Stafford King. The winning jockey was seven-pound claimer Lee Tibbatts.
Rodi Greene won the closing Pot Black Handicap Hurdle on the bay 10-year-old Kippanour.
The next meeting is on Monday.