are set to benefit from the incredibly tight margins in the British jumps trainers’ championship as their Easter meeting has attracted healthy support from the key protagonists.
Dan Skelton holds a narrow lead over Irish rival and defending champion Willie Mullins, with some significant prize money on offer at Plumpton on Easter Sunday and Monday, when the track’s commitment to providing worthy prize pots has been rewarded.
On Sunday the key event is the BetGoodwin Sussex Champion Hurdle, in which Mullins has entered County Hurdle winner Kargese, the useful dual-purpose gelding Absurde, who was third in the same race, and the two-time Cheltenham Festival winner Sir Gerhard.
Mullins has 11 horses entered at the track on Sunday, whereas Skelton has put forward 17 at this stage and has four in the mix for the feature race worth £39,023 to the winner.
“We’re really happy with the entries, we’ve benefited with the title race becoming so close, which we hoped we would,” said Marcus Waters, clerk of the course at Plumpton.
“Willie Mullins has entered some really high class horses, ones that have won and performed really well at Cheltenham in the past, which is brilliant.
“We’ve got a good cohort of our local trainers sending their best horses as well, so hopefully we’ll get some very competitive racing.
“When we were planning the meeting across the two Premier racing days, part of our thinking was that it might go down to the wire like it did last year.
“That might bring people to tracks they wouldn’t go to normally, which gives us a really good opportunity to showcase what Plumpton is all about.
“The forecast shows a little bit of rain this week but it’s not going to change dramatically, hopefully they stand their ground as the whole card looks really good.
“We’re looking forward to getting the Monday entries tomorrow and seeing what we’ve got there. We’ve the £100,000 Sussex Champion Chase so hopefully we can replicate the quality of the entries across the two days.”