Race type - Jump
Uttoxeter
Course details
GUIDE - For Racecourse
Left-handed, undulating, oval circuit of about 1m2f.
Uttoxeter has come a long way since its humble beginnings in 1907, when it offered just five meetings a year and was frequented mainly by the local gentry. These days, now under the care of Northern Racing, its a modern progressive course and is clearly doing a lot right to please racegoers as it is regularly voted the 'Regional Racecourse of the Year'. It's central location ensures it is patronised by both northern and southern stables and the crowd is diverse too. In more recent years it has been allocated several meetings during June, July and August, and there is no better place to spend a summer's evening with a cold pint of beer in hand.
Principal Races
The Midlands Grand National, sponsored in 2011 by Totesport, is run over 4m1f on the Saturday after the Cheltenham Festival and attracts some of the best stayers around, including a strong Irish contingent. As a result, many Irish punters stay on after the festival and many a pint of guinness is downed both at the course and in the nearby town. There have been several successful gambles in the race, including in 2010 when Synchronised got up under an inspired ride from Tony McCoy. The course also stages several meetings during the summer as it is able to water the track freely and the feature race is the valuable English Summer National run in late June.
Course Characteristics
The course itself is fairly galloping in nature and the bends far from sharp, meaning that long-striding animals can get into a good rhythm. That said, the course does undulate quite severely in places and there are several twists and turns too, so it's possible for front runners to establish a good lead and stay there. Some jockeys are more adapt than others at judging the pace right and therefore saving enough up their sleeve for the finish, see below. The fences do take some jumping and it's never over until they've cleared the last, whilst the ground can get extremly testing in the winter - too much watering in summer doesn't help!
Top Trainers
Donald McCain leads the way numerically with 36 winners, closely followed by Jonjo O'Neil, which is not surprising given their retained jockeys are Jason Maguire and Tony McCoy respectively. Backing them blind, however, is not advisable and a more profitable route is to follow Somerset trainer David Pipe as his healthy strike rate of 19% would have given backers a level stakes profit of nearly £20. Over the summer, you could do a lot worse than back Tim Vaughan's runners as the Welsh wizard has been caning bookmakers for the last couple of seasons - 23 winners at a strike rate of 20% and a level stakes profit of £24. With the quality of horses in his yard improving year-on-year, he could be one to follow in the winter months too. Local trainers tend to do well here and Jenny Candlish is frequently amongst the winners.
Top Jockeys
The aforementioned Tony McCoy can normally be relied upon to ride a winner here, although his mounts often go off at short prices, which helps explain a level-stakes loss of £96 to a theoretical £1 stake on all his rides in the last five seasons. Still, with 52 winners on the board, who's complaining! A meeting rarely goes by without a winner for Jason Maguire, who is mustard when riding for his main employer Donald McCain - 41 winners at a strike rate of over 20%. Richard Johnson (31 / 16%), Paddy Brennan (25 / 16%) and Tom Scudamore (20 / 11%) know every blade of grass round here and will get the job done on the right horse.