DonaldMcCain

I am delighted to be joining Betfair and am looking forward to providing you with an insight from the yard, giving you the lowdown on my runners and hopefully pointing you in the direction of a few winners during the coming months.

Last season was a terrific one for the yard. We finished third in the trainers' championship with a seasonal best tally of 100 winners, the highlight obviously being Ballabriggs winning the Grand National in April. We also had a number of other high points during the season, including Peddlers Cross winning the rearranged Fighting Fifth at Newbury and doing us all extremely proud when finishing runner-up in the Champion Hurdle.

It was also nice to pinch another nice prize on the Flat during the summer, with Overturn winning the Chester Cup. However, we are always looking to improve and the current campaign has started well, with 44 winners on the board so far.

Over the summer we have put in a new two-furlong round gallop made out of wax and sand. The surface is designed to stand up to different climates, so hopefully that will keep us going through the winter when the weather freezes. We had a lot of help from Michael Owen and Tom Dascombe during the cold snap last winter, and I couldn't stand another winter like that!

Hopefully though, with this new gallop in place, we won't have to resort to relying on other people this time round. We have also been able to school on the gallop and it is being used to get the horses started and everything is coming along nicely at present.

We have some fine young horses that have joined us for the coming season and a number of those will be horses to follow, but they are the future and horses like Ballabriggs and Peddlers Cross are the present.

Ballabriggs has been coming along nicely, but we are in no great hurry to get him started and his whole season is being geared around one day; defending his Grand National crown at Aintree. We have no set timescale with him at the moment and his owner, Mr Hemmings has given us a free hand, but I don't imagine we will be running him over hurdles this season. We were able to exploit the fact that he was still a novice over hurdles last season and it was a nice way to get him started, but if we ran him in handicaps over hurdles this term, he would probably end up running off his chase mark, so there is no real benefit to be gained. If things go well I would imagine we would end up using the race at Kelso again in March as his final prep before Aintree, but where he goes before then I'm not quite sure at present.

I see that Peddlers Cross features prominently in lists for both the Arkle and RSA Chase, but I would be amazed if he ended up in the RSA this season; I would be very surprised if I ran him over that trip! The Arkle or the new 2½ miler at the Festival look more likely, but obviously Cheltenham is some way off. He has had a couple of schools and everything has gone well. He is very exciting - the most exciting horse you can train. I am hoping to have him ready for the next Bangor meeting, on November 9. The beginners' chase there is always a decent race, and I believe if we go there we may be taking on Paul Nicholls' Al Ferof. If that is the case then so be it; Bangor is our local course, Peddlers Cross has won there before and I see no reason not to start there.

Another couple of horses we have high hopes for this season are Overturn and Wymott.

It was nice to see Overturn get his head in front again over hurdles at Perth during the summer, and he has had a quiet few weeks since. We have always wanted to step him up in trip so we are going to give that a try, ground permitting in the Ascot hurdle over 2m 3f in November, and that will give us a bit more of an idea of where to go with him. His Flat form suggests that he would get that trip and in the back of my mind, I think he may even get three miles. I did school him over fences and he was brilliant, but I had a good long talk with owner Tim Leslie and we have decided to stick to hurdles for time being.

Wymott is in good form, he had a school last week and we are happy with him at the moment. Obviously it was a bit of a disaster at Cheltenham, but we found what was wrong - it was a small fracture high up on his off-fore leg - I'm hoping that explains the run. He looks great at the moment and there is an intermediate chase at Carlisle in a couple of weeks that I've got my eye on, but that might come too soon for him and we will have to play it by ear. After that I don't really know, I just want to get him back on the racecourse. I panicked by putting cheekpieces on at Cheltenham as I thought he might possibly be inclined to just pull himself up in front, and was perhaps lacking a little in concentration, but he's 12 months older and there is not an issue with that now. He is a useful tool, we just have to manage him properly.

They are just four of the horses who will provide plenty to look forward to over the coming months, and the jumps season is just starting to click into gear now. The horses are running well at present, we had two seconds at Carlisle last Thursday, but a number of ours are just needing the run which is fine; we are just looking for a nice bit of ground at present to get them started. You never know what can happen in this game. There could be a jockey strike and then snow and frost could set in and we would be going nowhere!

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