Staying stalwart Thyme Hill returns to action over hurdles

Thyme Hill and Dashel Drasher lock horns in the bet365 West Yorkshire Hurdle at Wetherby on Saturday.

Thyme Hill, now trained in partnership by Philip Hobbs and his long-time assistant Johnson White, has been a regular in major staying hurdles over the past few years and rarely runs a bad race.

Last season connections elected to embark on a novice campaign over fences, but while he managed a Grade One win in the Kauto Star Novices’ Chase at Kempton, he disappointed in the Brown Advisory at the Cheltenham Festival in March and reverts to the smaller obstacles for his reappearance.

The son of Kayf Tara is approaching the twilight of his career as a nine-year-old, but Hobbs feels the fire still burns bright judged on what he is seeing on the gallops at his Somerset base.

“He’s very well indeed, we’re well happy with him,” he said.

“Maybe his confidence wasn’t great over fences, so we thought we’d start back over hurdles and he handles very soft ground.”

Dashel Drasher has similarly been a fine servant to his trainer Jeremy Scott, proving himself a top-level operator both over hurdles and over fences.

The 10-year-old made a successful start to last season in a small field conditions race at Aintree before finishing second in the Many Clouds Chase, the Relkeel Hurdle, the Cleeve Hurdle and the Stayers’ Hurdle.

An outing at Aintree’s Grand National meeting proved one too many, but Scott is looking forward to her stable star’s return to action.

He said: “He looks a picture. Like a lot of horses he may well need the run, he usually does need the run on his first outing anyway, but he looks very well and looks stronger than ever, so we’ll see how we get on.

“He won at Aintree over two and a half first time out last season. We didn’t feel we had him at his best then and I think he’s probably be in a better place than we did this time last year, anyway.

“It will be soft old ground – it’ll be testing. He does go on that ground, whether it ekes out his stamina a bit much, I don’t know.”

Gary Moore’s Botox Has was two places behind Dashel Drasher when fourth in the Cleeve Hurdle in January and makes his first competitive appearance since this weekend.

Jamie Snowden’s Paddy Power Gold Cup hero Ga Law, Peter Fahey’s Irish raider Ambitious Fellow and the Paul Nicholls-trained Red Risk complete the line-up.