Ripon preview: Chancery handicapped to strike

Chancery can take advantage of a drop in the weights to land the 1m 2f handicap on today’s seven-race card at Ripon (16.00).

The David O’Meara trained gelding made a winning return to action when scoring over course and distance, running on strongly to cosily beat Puzzle Time by 2 1/4 lengths of a length off a mark of 89.

Chancery backed that up with a solid seventh of 18 to Mahsoob in a class 2 contest at York off 95, and was also far from disgraced when third to Fire Fighting in a similar grade affair at Redcar.

The seven-year-old then failed to sparkle in his next three starts, but that resulted in the handicapper cutting him some slack and Chancery hinted that his time was near when putting an improved effort to finish a 1 1/4 length fourth in a class 2 contest over 1m 4f at this venue last time out.

It was a huge step back in the right direction, and Chancery is able to race in this lower grade class 3 affair off an unchanged mark of 90.

That is just 1lb higher than when last successful and gives the son of Street Cry major claims from a handicapping perspective.

The drop back down in trip will also suit, and another plus is that Chancery hails from a yard which does well with its runners at the venue.

In the 1m handicap (16.30), Gone With The Wind looks weighted to go well at a big price.

The gelding landed back-to-back contests at Lingfield and Kempton in the early part of last year when trained by Jeremy Noseda, with the last of those successes coming off a mark of 76.