Hugo Palmer blog: 'He can run a race full of promise'

Hugo Palmer is back with an exclusive blog, with the top trainer and Coral ambassador running us through his runners on Saturday at Chester.

Due To Dance makes his racecourse debut in the opening race on the card, and he’s a nice colt who I’m looking forward to getting started with. Like many of our two-year-olds, he might just need the experience, but I’m sure he’ll learn a lot this weekend, and I’d say he’ll improve on whatever he achieves here.

It’s a small field, and there’s nice prize money on offer, so hopefully he can settle into the race nicely, and he has a good draw in stall 3, so I’m hopeful that he can run a race full of promise.

Sadly, Rajinsky will be a non-runner at Chester this weekend. We were hoping to get him back on the racecourse sooner rather than later, but there just hasn’t been enough rain at Chester for him, so we’ll wait until we can find some cut in the ground.

Balon d’Or has been done no favours by the draw in stall 7, so that’s frustrating, but hopefully he can get a bit of luck and overcome it. Even though he hasn’t been running too badly, he’s just been making hard work of it of late, and we thought he probably should of won at Carlisle last time, but he just didn’t for whatever reason, so we are trying the blinkers here in the hope they will sharpen him up.

He has run well at Chester on a few occasions, so we know he handles the track, and he’s come down another pound in the weights, so if the blinkers have the desired effect, then he could go close here.

It Ain’t Two does have a bit to find at the weights here, but it’s a valuable race worth having a crack at. It’s a competitive race with a few unexposed types in there, but she’s done very little wrong of late, so I think she’s entitled to take her chance. 

This will be her first run at Chester, so hopefully she handles it, but she has a nice draw in stall 3, so if she gets away well, then hopefully she’s capable of getting involved.