Decade of hard graft paying dividends for Honeyball
Early January may be a relatively quiet time for racing, but this is nevertheless an important weekend for in-form west country trainer Anthony Honeyball.
His potential RSA hope Fountains Windfall, which appeared to have the Kauto Star Chase at his mercy when falling four out on Boxing Day, goes back to Kempton for a handicap chase while the mares Cresswell Breeze and Ms Parfois head to Warwick.
Quantock-born Honeyball, 37, whose father trained Gold Cup winner The Dikler to win his first pointto-point, has been training for just over a decade and, since the middle of November, has sent out four doubles and a treble – no mean feat for a 35-horse yard.
“It has,” he explained, “taken 10 years of blood, sweat and tears along with my wife Rachael [the former point-to-point champion rider] to climb the ladder this far but we’re not in a position yet where we couldn’t slip back down. We buy our horses and we have properly grafted.”
The result of that is that with 24 winners he is on course for his best season. “The horses haven’t missed a beat. Horses we thought were a certain level have surprised us and the youngsters have done more than we expected,” he said.
That record would be even smarter if Fountains Windfall had not fallen on his past two runs. At Newbury he was in with every chance three out and at Kempton, though half a mile from home, he and Black Corton had begun to pull well clear.
“Usually it all works out,” Honeyball reflected. “When Regal Encore was nearly brought down last season and had to pull up in a £40,000 race it meant we could run him in a £100,000 race eight days later, which he won. We wouldn’t have run him in it had he not pulled up.
“Having said that, at the moment I can’t think of too many silver linings to Fountains Windfall’s fall at Kempton but, when he stops falling, his jumping will win him more races than it costs him. He seems in very good form.”
Cresswell Breeze, which has to carry a big weight in the Classic, won the Southern National on good to soft and was a decent third to Benbens at Sandown in December. “The ground is a bit of worry,” said Honeyball. “She’s better on good to soft though I think she’ll handle it.”
His best chance lies, he believes, with Ms Parfois who won at Cheltenham and Newbury within five days in December. “She should be hard to beat,” he said.
Is this another weekend for a double or treble? “I’d be very happy with one winner and a clear round from Fountains Windfall,” he said.