Good night in North Yorkshire

The Coniston Hotel outside Skipton in North Yorkshire staged their Cheltenham Festival preview for a second consecutive year and it was a most enjoyable evening on Monday. An audience of around 100 attended and listened to the views of Brian Hughes, Henrietta Knight, Michael Shinners and Harry Bannister. It was great to see Henrietta Knight, for featured for a number of years in the Talking Trainers section of One Jump Ahead. She trained seven Festival winners, including Best Mate's brilliant treble in the Cheltenham Gold Cup. Hen is busy nowadays scouting new horses both in the UK and abroad, plus schooling any number of horses. She certainly had some interesting views regarding some of the horses who will be competing at next week's meeting. I will include those in the Festival Update.

The preview nights are in full swing at present and I am heading back to Yorkshire tomorrow to do some filming at Sky Bet headquarters in Leeds before being part of the panel at Doncaster racecourse on Wednesday evening. I will therefore be back to update the Diary on Thursday. 

In the meantime, if you haven't already ordered a copy of the Cheltenham Festival Update, please go to the Publications section of the site. It is £10.00 and includes interviews with Paul Nicholls and Philip Hobbs, plus Irish expert Declan Phelan has penned his informative piece.