There is a name that has rapidly become very familiar to UK punters in the last two seasons through the sheer consistency of his horses and it’s that of Jeremy Gask.

Taking out a South Australian licence is 1997, Jeremy, now 34, quickly rose to the status of top 5 trainer for each of the final 5 years he spent Down Under, which his high strike rate most notable. This extreme progress bought him to the attention of Horses First Racing, who were delighted when they secured his services to train at Sutton Veny, Wiltshire, where the new partnership is showing the same promise as the operation in Oz had done over a decade ago.

‘The Beeches’, a 160-acre farm under organic management, is where Jeremy primes his charges for their races. The converted dairy farm has undergone serious development to now include 3 individual gallops over varying gradients and distances; perhaps the key to Gask’s success with sprinters is the 4.5 furlong ‘Straight Flat Gallop’, which allows 3 horses to work upsides. Add to this a high-speed treadmill, lunge ring, schooling facilities and 3 separate horse walkers (1 x soft tarmac, 1 x water and 1 x indoor) and you can tell they mean business. Attention to detail is typified by a custom-built observation tower on the gallops and the ‘Vitafloor’ – a vibrating and tilting stable floor that aids circulation and therefore injury recovery. Clearly Gask and his backers are keen exponents of using modern methods to train the equine athlete.

Kindly Jeremy has agreed to point us in the direction of 5 horses that he is looking forward to running as the season progresses. Many thanks to Jeremy and Kevin for helping with this feature.


Royal Riviera: Joined us after winning his only start in a junior bumper in very good style for Alan Swinbank. A big, imposing type, he has impressed in his work from the outset and we were delighted with his first run for us in a 12f maiden at Chepstow earlier this month. He failed to handle the undulations, but still came home to good effect behind two useful sorts and we would expect him to improve quite a bit from that back on a more conventional track. We would be hopeful of him winning a valuable staying handicap before the end of the season. He ran second at Kempton on Wednesday.

Medicean Man: A very slow learner that has progressed up the ranks as he has become more race-hardened, he still isn’t the finished article mentally. He possesses a very potent turn of foot, but doesn’t like being crowded in his races and thus needs things to go his way in big-field handicaps, hence his slightly inconsistent profile this season. The ground was too quick for him in the Wokingham on his last start and we expect him to prove himself to be Listed-class in the months ahead.

One Way Or Another winning under Australian jock Clare Lindop

One Way Or Another: You would struggle to find an unluckier horse in Britain. He should have won well on his seasonal reappearance at Doncaster, but ran into serious trouble in the closing stages. It has been a similar story on all of his subsequent starts and while it has been extremely frustrating, the silver lining is that he has dropped down to an attractive mark. 6 or 7f is fine for him, an ease in the ground is ideal and he needs covering up in his races. He is capable of winning a valuable handicap if things finally drop his way.

Amun Ra: One of our nicer two-year-olds, he is a full-brother to a Grade 2 winner in America that Jeremy bought at Keeneland. He is growing and maturing all the time and is a really athletic individual that is impressing in the early stages of his faster work. It will probably be August at the earliest before he runs, but he is one to keep an eye on once he gets to the track.

Sutton Veny: Always a nice filly, she was progressing really well last year before getting a little bit jarred up at Sandown and it took her a while to regain her confidence. She came back to form on the all-weather and completed a hat-trick in great style last February. She had quite a long campaign at that stage, so we gave her a break and she made a very encouraging return to action over 5f at Lingfield earlier this month. She can be expected to improve from that and will be better suited by 6f. We will get her back on the turf in the coming weeks and she should continue to improve.

 

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