Novices’ day at Wetherby racecourse (From Gazette & Herald)

Novices’ day at Wetherby racecourse

9:57am Tuesday 31st January 2012 in Sport

LEADING novice chasers will do battle at Wetherby on Saturday.

The highlight of a seven-race programme at the Yorkshire track is the totepool Towton Novices’ Chase – a Grade 2 contest for stayers.

The Towton Chase was won last year by Wayward Prince, one of last season’s leading novice chasers, who has competed in this season’s Hennessy Gold Cup at Newbury and the Rowland Meyrick Handicap Chase back at Wetherby.

The roll-call of other previous winners includes horses of the calibre of Weird Al, Kornati Kid, Heltornic, Ollie Magern, Royal Emperor, Keen Leader, Arctic Camper, Kadou Nonantais, Escartifigue and Mr Mulligan, who went on to win the 1997 Cheltenham Gold Cup.

Totepool also put their name to a couple of hurdle contests – a handicap race for stayers over three miles and one furlong and the other for novice hurdlers over two and three-quarter miles.

Brothers Nick and Pat Wilmot-Smith – long-standing directors of the Wetherby steeplechase committee – are commemorated in the Wilmot-Smith Memorial Cup, a Hunter Chase over three miles and one furlong.

The late Nick Wilmot-Smith served on the racecourse committee for 59 years and was chairman between 1968 and 1996.