Fry confident Gidleigh Park will shine over fences

Ashley Iveson
April 23, 2024 2:38 pm

‘We’ve always had half an eye on the day this horse goes novice chasing.’

Harry Fry is excited to see what Gidleigh Park can achieve over fences next season following his sixth-place finish in the Albert Bartlett at the Cheltenham Festival.

Impressive on his racecourse debut in a Chepstow bumper in the spring of last year, the six-year-old this term established himself as one of Britain’s leading novice hurdlers with a hat-trick of victories.

Having claimed Grade Two honours on Festival Trials day at Cheltenham in January, the son of Walk In The Park lost his unbeaten record on his return to the Cotswolds last month, with Fry blaming a combination of three miles and heavy ground for his slightly disappointing effort.

“He’s fine, it just didn’t happen for us on the day,” said the Dorset-based trainer.

“Obviously, the ground went testing from Thursday night into Friday and suddenly we were encountering what we’d been trying to avoid, which was running him over three miles on testing ground.

“It just meant they went steady, sensibly in the conditions, which didn’t suit us and he just overraced through the early and middle part of it and didn’t give himself a chance to really see it out.

“Hindsight is a wonderful thing and I don’t think we’d have beaten Ballyburn in the other race anyway (Gallagher Novices’ Hurdle). Probably the race we should have run in was the Supreme as it turned out, given the conditions.

“He’s fine and he’s been schooling away over fences since Cheltenham, which has gone very well, ahead of a novice chase campaign next season.

“We’ve always had half an eye on the day this horse goes novice chasing and he won’t be the first novice hurdler to get beat at the Festival and go on to better things over fences.”