The East made a major move to the top of the Racing League after a strong finish to night two of the team competition at Wolverhampton.<\/p>\n
The Charlie Fellowes-led outfit left Yarmouth empty-handed in terms of winners a week ago, but got off the mark with 7-2 favourite Swivell in the penultimate race of the evening at Dunstall Park and Fellowes then played the second of his two allowed jokers in the finale.<\/p>\n
Sir Mark Prescott\u2019s 3-1 market leader Immediate Effect was narrowly denied top honours for the team, beaten a short head by Wales & The West representative Silent Age, but did pick up double points for finishing second as did Fox Avatar in fifth, ensuring The East now lead the way on 289 points.<\/p>\n
Speaking prior to the last race, Fellowes told Sky Sports Racing: \u201cIt was always the plan to play the joker. Both trainers were very positive about their chances.\u201d<\/p>\n
London & The South held a narrow lead after last week\u2019s treble at Yarmouth and while they failed to add to their tally on night two, they are The East\u2019s closest pursuers on 270 points.<\/p>\n
Scotland, managed for the first time this year by broadcaster Alex Steedman, also made a flying start to the competition with three winners at Yarmouth and continued their good form with a Wolverhampton one-two, as James Owen\u2019s Charging Thunder (100-30) and 5lb claimer Mason Paetel narrowly denied Charlie Johnston\u2019s La Pulga in a driving finish.<\/p>\n
Ireland\u2019s team manager Mick Fitzgerald played a joker in the same race, but the best of his two runners was the third home Chutzpal.<\/p>\n
Steedman, whose team is now third on 259 points, said: \u201cIn victory and defeat, those are two of the best two rides you\u2019ll see. I thought Paul Mulrennan was tremendous (on La Pulga) and both riders got the best out of a difficult situation.<\/p>\n
\u201cMulrennan has glided across from stall 12 without using up too much gas and drops anchor and controls the race, but unfortunately he\u2019s come up against a horse with really classy form who got a kind of Arazi ride from three furlongs out round the outside.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was just a thing of beauty and what a race to watch. It was one of the guys who has been doing at the top level for a long time and one of the young guys who I think will be doing it for years to come.\u201d<\/p>\n
Yorkshire were bottom of the table after week one but now sit fourth (197 points) after a well played joker from team manager Leonna Mayor, with Marco Botti\u2019s Hyperchromatic (9-2) winning the fifth race on the card under Joanna Mason and fellow Yorkshire runner Double Parked picking up valuable points in third.<\/p>\n
Mayor said: \u201cI\u2019m pleased. Both of them had a chance on the betting and to be fair to Marco he\u2019s great and this was actually the first horse he flagged up that he wanted to run here.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can say the way in which he\u2019s won he\u2019s obviously a very good horse.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ireland are fifth (178) after scoring with the Richard Hughes-trained Sudden Flight (85-40), with Wales & The West sixth (169), having broken their duck for the competition with Silent Age.<\/p>\n
The North (165) enjoyed a double on the night thanks to Mick Appleby\u2019s Intervention (5-1) and the Richard Fahey-trained Stormy Impact (10-1), but are nevertheless bottom of the seven-strong league.<\/p>\n
Speaking after Intervention\u2019s opening race success, The North\u2019s manager \u2013 former footballer and racehorse trainer Mick Quinn \u2013 said: \u201cGet in you beauty! We\u2019ve moved on from last week at Yarmouth, a bit further north \u2013 you can smell the northern air!<\/p>\n
\u201cWe come into our own the further north we go, so we should peak at Southwell and Newcastle.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fahey said of Stormy Impact, winner of the 3YO Dash at Epsom on Derby day: \u201cShe\u2019s not very big but she\u2019s as tough as nails \u2013 she\u2019s a fast pony!<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s unbelievable when a horse tries how much it means to a trainer and I love her to bits.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The East made a major move to the top of the Racing League after a strong finish to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":36817,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[3004,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-36816","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-racing","tag-racing","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36816","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36816"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36816\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36817"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36816"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36816"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36816"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}