Cockney Sparrow, triumphant in Listed company on her hurdling reappearance at Wetherby last month, bids to step up to the premier league at Newcastle on Saturday.

The Fighting Fifth Hurdle is the target for the Ryedale mare, who will be aiming to follow in the distinguished hoofprints of her stablemate Countrywide Flame, who won the Grade 1 race 12 months ago for trainer John Quinn.

Countrywide Flame is, alas, sidelined for this season with a stress fracture, but in Cockney Sparrow Quinn has another hurdler who may be capable of mixing it with the very best.

Indeed, the Fighting Fifth tilt is no afterthought. The race was very much in her trainer’s plans as he prepared her for her first start of the jumps campaign.

Cockney Sparrow, who had won on the Flat at Ayr in September, lined up against a useful field at Wetherby four weeks ago, but she put them very much to the sword in the OLBG.com Hurdle by winning comfortably under Dougie Costello, who was impressed with her performance.

Also a winner of a hot handicap hurdle at Aintree on Grand National day in April, Cockney Sparrow is a mare very much on an upward curve.

“She’s stronger, more mature this year. She did well in the summer,” says Quinn of the four-year-old, who had previously been trained on the Flat by Peter Chapple-Hyam. “You would like to think there is more improvement to come from her.”

The chances are that Cockney Sparrow will need to improve again to clinch Saturday’s first Grade 1 hurdle of the season.

The likely opposition is set to include the Nicky Henderson-trained My Tent Or Yours, who was among the leading novices last season, and Melodic Rendevous, a Wincanton winner on his reappearance after proving himself a potential class act last term.

It’s all to play for. While Tony McCoy will be Newcastle-bound to ride My Tent Or Yours in the colours of his retaining owner JP McManus, Costello will be reunited with Cockney Sparrow, who is not the sole Ryedale hope in this £100,000 contest.

David O’Meara is aiming to saddle Ifandbutwhynot, while Brian Ellison has the option of running his recent Wetherby winner, Stormy Weather. Both horses are course-and-distance winners, but both have something to find with Cockney Sparrow on official ratings.

A cracking race is forecast and Quinn will be hoping for a similarly happy outcome as that which he enjoyed 12 months ago.

 

• Cape Tribulation is set to journey to Newbury on Saturday for a crack at the featured Hennessy Gold Cup.

Malcolm Jefferson’s star performer, a Grade 2 winner at Cheltenham last season, pulled up in the Charlie Hall Chase at Wetherby this month on his reappearance and faces a daunting challenge this weekend as he is set to carry top weight in one of the hottest handicap chases of the entire season.

It could be a big Saturday for Jefferson. The Norton trainer also has Oscar Rock set to go to Newcastle in a bid to make it two from two over hurdles.

One of last season’s leading bumper performers, the exciting gelding won impressively on his hurdling bow at Wetherby earlier this month and looks a horse set to take high rank this season for owners Graham and Jan Calder.

Oscar Rock will be partnered by Brian Hughes, who could hardly be in better form at the moment.

Having won on the Jefferson-trained King Of The Wolds at Fakenham last week, Hughes followed up with a Hexham hat-trick, initiated by James Ewart’s Snuker and completed by John Quinn’s new recruit Forced Family Fun and the Jefferson-trained Our Boy Ben.

 

• Peter Beaumont, the last Ryedale trainer to saddle a Cheltenham Gold Cup winner, has been honoured for his services to racing in the county.

A man who will forever be remembered for his handling of Jodami, winner of the 1993 Gold Cup, Beaumont, who retired in 2010, received the Lifetime Achievement Award at the Go Racing In Yorkshire Awards Luncheon at Doncaster racecourse last week.

“What a surprise, I never had any idea,” said Beaumont after being presented with a framed collage detailing all of his best horses and major successes.

Jodami obviously took pride of place. Winner of 18 of his 39 starts and almost £500,000 in prize money, the handsome gelding was three times a winner of the Hennessy Cognac Irish Gold Cup, twice successful in Haydock’s Peter Marsh Chase and also triumphant in Ayr’s Grade 2 West of Scotland Pattern Chase.

“Even when he was a young horse, he looked very good,” said Beaumont of the star performer, who not only won the Cheltenham Gold Cup under Mark Dwyer but who found only The Fellow too strong when attempting a repeat victory 12 months later.

“Mark rode him very well. Him and Jodami really gelled,” he recalled.

Hussard Collonges was Beaumont’s other Cheltenham Festival winner. In the hands of Russ Garritty, he landed the 2002 RSA Chase at 33-1.

“He would have been a very good horse, only he broke his pelvis and was never the same afterwards,” explained his trainer.

Patiently nurturing staying chasers was Beaumont’s forte throughout his career, which was launched on the back of spectacular success with point-to-pointers like Sporting Luck, winner of 20 of his 29 races, and J-J Henry, who won five points and 11 chases, the most notable of which came in the 1991 John Hughes Memorial Chase at Aintree when he created a little piece of racing history. He was ridden to victory that day by Peter’s daughter, Anthea (Morshead), who thus became the first lady rider to beat male professionals in a race over the Grand National fences.

Young Kenny was a special horse to Beaumont.

Not only did he win the Scottish Grand National, the Midlands National, the Becher Chase and the Greenalls Grand National Trial, he was also home-bred.

“He was born and reared on the place which made what he achieved even more special,” acknowledged Beaumont, based throughout his career at Foulrice Farm at Brandsby, where he continues to live.

Among the other smart performers under his care were Bobby Grant, a dual-winner of Haydock’s Tommy Whitte Chase, Island Chief, Hunters Tweed and Niki Dee, who finished third to Papillon in the 2000 Grand National.

Richard Fahey, meanwhile, secured the Skybet-sponsored Top Flat Trainer award at the luncheon for a fourth time.

He trained 65 winners on the Yorkshire tracks this year and was delighted to follow up his successes in this sphere in 2008, ’09 and ’10.

Danny Tudhope, who won the Skybet Top Jockey award for the first time last year, retained his crown with 44 winners on the Yorkshire courses, the vast majority of them supplied by his number one supporter, Nawton trainer David O’Meara.

The respective Trainer and Jockey Jumps awards were won by Keith Reveley and Denis O’Regan, who made the journey from his Newmarket base to receive his trophy. “It means a lot to me,” he said.

Having a Grand National winner trained in the county meant a lot to northern journalists who unanimously voted Aurora’s Encore as the Yorkshire Horse of the Year.

The celebrated gelding is trained at Bingley by Sue Smith, who was accompanied to the lunch by her husband, the show jumping legend Harvey Smith.

 

• A hurdling career awaits Dubai Celebration. But in the meantime the Norton gelding is paying his way with a spell of all-weather Flat racing.

Trained by Julie Camacho, the five-year-old scored with authority under the floodlights of Wolverhampton last Friday night when powering to a length-and-three-quarters victory under Barry McHugh.

Steve Brown, the trainer’s husband and assistant, said: “He’s a grand horse who only cost us £800.

“That’s two races he’s won for us now and he’s also been placed lots of times. We’ve done plenty of schooling with him over hurdles – Harry Haynes has done a lot of work on him – and he’ll go hurdling as soon we get some decent ground.”

For the time being, Dubai Celebration may well make another journey or two to Wolverhampton’s Polytrack circuit. “He likes the course and goes well round there,” added Brown.

 

• Big Storm Coming may not be the most instantly remembered winner trained by Brian Ellison in 2013, but the gelding earned himself one notable distinction when scoring at Southwell last week.

Ridden by Irish jockey Ben Curtis and starting at 5-1, Big Storm Coming ran out a decisive two lengths scorer and supplied Ellison with his 96th winner of the year, over Flat and jumps, which is one more than his previous best score, achieved last year.

The century looks a foregone conclusion before Auld Lang Syne is being sung.

 

• The funeral takes place at Richmond Catholic Church in Richmond, North Yorkshire, tomorrow (Thursday) of Vince Mullins, who has a far-flung connection with this area.

Vince worked for the late Bill Dutton in the 1960s and looked after top sprinter Papa Fourway.