Joe Tizzard: “Native River is in great form and looks a million dollars.”

We get the latest from the Tizzard stables

It was disappointing that Thistlecrack’s run in the Charlie Hall Chase this weekend had to be cancelled.

The original plan was run at Wetherby and then go to Haydock [the Betfair Chase], but now things are a bit more fluid; he’s in the BetVictor at Cheltenham and the Ladbrokes Trophy, but obviously they are both handicaps, which makes them less appealing.  

It is frustrating that we’re waiting for some rain to soften the going, but everyone is in the same boat and we just have to be patient.

Normally at this time of year we’d all have our going, and can plan accordingly, but not this year, and with Thistlecrack there was never any question of running him on quicker ground, the risk of him jarring up would be much too high.

Hopefully there is a change in the weather coming, although it won’t happen overnight, as we do need to start running our horses, particularly the novice chasers, as there just aren’t the options for these horses. 

With novice hurdlers it’s less of an issue as there are races for them all the time. However we just have to be patient, we’re only in November and it’s a long season, the rain will come and there will be plenty of time to get the horses out. 

You can see that field sizes are down, but no one will thank us for running horses on ground that’s too quick, so we’ll just sit tight for now.

Native River is in great form, he’s working hard and looks a million dollars, his plan was always to go straight to Haydock later in the month and that’s not changed. 

We haven’t schooled any of them on the grass yet as it’s too quick, but we’ve got the indoor school so they can all do plenty of jumping, although you always want to give the novice hurdlers and chasers a spin on the grass before they run if you can.