Charisma Cat pounces for Listed honours

Charisma Cat looks to have booked her ticket to Aintree in the spring having regained the winning thread in the British Stallion Studs EBF Mares’ Standard Open National Hunt Flat Race at Sandown.

A winner on her first two starts, she was somewhat unfortunate to lose her unbeaten record when upped to Listed level at Market Rasen in January, beaten a neck by David Pipe’s Kingston Queen.

However, given another chance in Listed company she confirmed form with Market Rasen third Dream Shadow to land the spoils as the 7-4 favourite.

Trainer Alan King now has his eye on the Grade Two Goffs Nickel Coin Mares’ Standard Open National Hunt Flat Race at the Grand National Festival, although he would not be averse to a run on the level in the summer.

“She is a little bit unlucky not to be unbeaten and it all went rotten for her leaving the back at Market Rasen and again round here she didn’t seem to handle the bend terribly well, but she’s come back on the bridle and I’m very happy,” said King.

“She wouldn’t want this ground really and it’s hard work out there. It’s just Sandown ground when it starts to dry and I said to Robert (Waley-Cohen, owner) before the race that if it wasn’t a Listed race I wouldn’t have run her, we’d have waited for Aintree. We got away with it.

“We’ve made up for Market Rasen today and we’ve got our win and black type and if we’re happy, we’ll go to Aintree.

“We’ve always loved her and she has a great pedigree – I would love a yard full of Nathaniel’s. We might run her on the Flat in the summer and she has a flattish pedigree. We’ll see and probably she won’t, but it wouldn’t be the worst thing to do.”

Neil Mulholland’s Narragansett (85-40 favourite) showed his quality earlier on the card to oblige favourite backers in the Betfair Racing Podcasts Juvenile Handicap Hurdle.

Considered good enough to be given a Triumph Hurdle entry by his handler, a big leap at the final flight of hurdles gave the youngster the momentum to wear down Gary and Josh Moore’s Galactic Charm and follow up a recent Plumpton success.

“He’s been really good and ran well first time at Market Rasen and was then maybe a little bit too keen at Wetherby, but we tried to hold on to him a little bit today and he did it well,” said Mulholland.

“He jumped well and has improved with racing, he’s done very little wrong, he’s now got two seconds and two wins and is going the right way. I know he needed a good jump at the last, but he got it and I was happy enough when he got there you know.

“He wouldn’t be good enough for the Triumph, so we would look at something like Aintree or Ayr and there’s a race at Ascot as well at the end of the month.”