Well with National Hunt fixtures dropping by the wayside as quickly as the rain drops from the sky at the moment there isn't much of interest going on this mid-week. However this does give us time to look forward to the weekend's racing with a few entries published today and I'll just touch on a couple from Sandown here.
The Esher venue plays host to the Betfred Contenders Hurdle which could see a clash between Willie Mullin's Champion Hurdle unknown Un De Sceaux and Jeremy Scott's stable star Melodic Rendezvous. This will be the highest class race Un De Sceaux has contested so far after blasting away rivals from the front in small fields over in Ireland and it will be interesting to see if he can do the same here. If he does succeed in the same impressive manner as in Ireland then he will definitely be a strong contender come March as Melodic Rendezvous will be getting his absolute ideal ground conditions here. Scott's horse comes here off the back of an impressive victory over the Nicholls trained Ptit Zig at Haydock last time out and would really need to be winning here to allow connections to harbour thoughts of a Champion Hurdle push. Melodic Rendezvous certainly won't have ground conditions as much to his liking in March so you would think if he can't win here then he doesn't really have a chance at Cheltenham. However if Un De Sceaux can stay in front in his usual manner then on one hand Willie Mullin's hand in the Champion Hurdle will be strengthened even more. However whether his stable stay Hurricane Fly will really appreciate a horse from the same stable setting a breakneck pace in the race is another matter completely and because of this there is a chance Mullins may steer Un De Sceaux away from Cheltenham as he does appear to have only one way of racing and that is from the front at a frantic pace!
Oscar Whiskey is the stand-out entry in the Scilly Islands Chase at the same venue, although there isn't much else in this line-up of the class of Nicky Henderson's charge. Oscar Whiskey has been racing and beating the likes of Taquin Du Seuil and Wonderful Charm so far this season so it would be nice to see him win well here, especially with concerns over a virus at the Henderson camp which Nicky has been forced to comment on and calm any panic around this. He said that he had been getting about 80% of tracheal washes come back clean rather than the usual 95%, still enough to cause concern for punters. With the King yard also suffering from a virus and Emma Lavelle, Rebecca Curtis and Jonjo O'Neil all undergoing strangely quiet periods there must be quite a lot of concern about the wellbeing of English-trained horses going towards the festival. Horses get viruses and bring them back to their yards at race meetings so this clearly puts the vast majority of English yards at risk at the moment and if this continues before March I would start to become seriously wary of where the horse I was backing at Cheltenham was being trained. However at the moment this is just going a bit over the top regarding the situation so I'll wait a month or so until we get further into February and then re-assess the situation.
You can be certain that the ground at Sandown will be very testing at the weekend so bear that in mind while looking towards the weekend. I think there is even the chance that the meeting could be washed away again but fingers-crossed that we can beat the weather for once this week!
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