Tom Scudamore talks up his weekend rides at Lingfield and Carlisle

Tom Scudamore blog

It was a great thrill to win the Becher Chase on Vieux Lion Rouge last Saturday. He gave me a great ride all the way round and showed plenty of guts to battle at the end. The plan now is to go back to Aintree in April for the Grand National. Around the park courses he doesn’t strike me as a good jumper and yet at Liverpool over the big fences he’s completely different. He’s really neat, tidy, clever and brave. He’s completely different round there.

I’d never had a winner over the National fences until twelve months ago, and now I’ve had two. Now it would be nice to win the Grand National. We will wait and see where we go next with Vieux Lion Rouge. The National is the plan and he’s rated 146. So it will be a case of whether we stick or twist. Will 146 be enough to get in the race? Last year 146 was good enough, but if say there’s a small field Gold Cup and a load of higher rated horses run at Aintree instead then 146 might miss out this year. If you run again and run well you can get a higher rating and guarantee to get in the race, but if you run poorly then you might get dropped which would be no help. It’s a conundrum I’m very happy to leave to the trainer.

Champers On Ice was great. I couldn’t see an awful lot in the fog but he jumped really nicely. He made one little novicey mistake but other than that he jumped fantastic. He’s a horse with lots of potential and I’d like to think that one day he’ll be a National horse, whether that’s The Grand National, or a Welsh Grand National or Scottish Grand National. That’s how I see him. I might be doing him a disservice and he may turn out to be even better than that, but I was really impressed with his debut. He’s a horse I’ve always thought a lot of.

Saturday rides

I’m off down to Lingfield for five rides as David hasn’t any runners at Cheltenham. I ride Chief Sittingbull in the bumper at 11.55. I know very little about him but Emma has a good record in these races. Fortunately there don’t seem to be too many flat trainers with runners in the race. It will be interesting. Emma does well with her bumper horses, as she does with all her horses. Let’s hope this one goes well.