At the confirmation stage a total of 31 entries remained for this Thursday’s Randox Foxhunters’ Chase on the opening day of Aintree’s Randox Grand National meeting.
Four horses, two from Britain and two from Ireland, are at or near the head of betting on the £50,000 race, which provides a first prize of just under £25,000 and money down to eighth place. Entries include one from the 2023 winner Famous Clermont, from Chris Barber’s Herefordshire stable, but last year’s winner, the Emmet Mullins-trained Its On The Line, has not been entered.
Will Biddick was Famous Clermont’s regular rider when the horse won Aintree’s big hunters’ chase two years ago, but following Barber’s move from Dorset to his current base James King seems set to take the ride. Not that Biddick will be watching from the grandstand, for he has struck up an association with the Ed Walker-trained My Drogo who won February’s Walrus Hunters’ Chase and could well go off favourite on Thursday.
Key fancies among the seven entries from Ireland will be the Gordon Elliott-trained Willitgoahead, who finished third in an Irish clean sweep of the recent St James’s Place Festival Hunters’ Chase at Cheltenham, and the Pat Doyle-trained Lifetime Ambition, who was hampered by loose horses when unseating in Corach Rambler’s 2023 Randox Grand National. More recently he was second to Willitgoahead in a point-to-point, and has since won twice in open races.
Other entries for horses who have won hunters’ chases this season include one for Bardenstown Lad, who scored for Sarah Loughnane stable at Fakenham, the Dan Skelton-trained Bennys King, who won at Leicester and has finished runner-up in the past two runnings of the Randox Foxhunters’ Chase, and Captain Tommy, who Fred Timmis has saddled to win twice at Ludlow in recent weeks.
Skelton has also entered Wetherby winner Jet Plane, for whom Jack Andrews has been booked to ride, while Harry Derham’s Joker De Mai was a recent Leicester hunters’ chase winner for owner-rider David Maxwell.