Phoenix Of Dreams made his sixth appearance on Friday, finishing an eventual ninth of eleven runners at Chester.

Friday saw Phoenix Of Dreams head to Chester for the first time in his career, still chasing his first win for the Coral Racing Club after a hat-trick of second place finishes. Confidence was relatively high going into the contest, in no small part due to the perceived quality of his previous races which we have seen multiple subsequent winners emerge from. The major pre-race concerns were around the going conditions at Chester, after the course saw a deluge of rain in the days building up to the meeting, leaving the ground heavy.

As always, ten lucky Coral Racing Club members won the opportunity to be Phoenix Of Dreams' Owners for the Day at Chester, each getting access to the parade ring, the Owners and Trainers facilities and the chance to meet the John and Sean Quinn team and jockey, Jason Hart. 


Phoenix Of Dreams' Owners for the Day with jockey Jason Hart prior to the race

Phoenix Of Dreams broke well from the stalls and took a solid position in the opening stages of the race, albeit three wide going round the first bend, before settling into a share of third for the first half of the contest. He looked relatively comfortable for this portion of the race and was keeping up with the front runners, who had gone into an early lead of a couple of lengths. 

Jason Hart began to work on our gelding three furlongs from home, and Phoenix Of Dreams did respond for the pressure and continued to gallop strongly. However this didn't last long and he began losing places and dropping back fairly quickly inside the final two furlongs. It became clear at this point that our three-year-old wasn't a fan of the ground conditions, which had worsened to become sticky underfoot, as the race was late in the day and the course had seen six races prior to this one. It was at this point that Jason Hart decided not to put anymore pressure on Phoenix Of Dreams and to allow him to get home in his own time.

The race was won by course specialist Paws For Thought, who had won at Chester four times before this race. Phoenix Of Dreams came home in ninth place, of the eleven runners that went to post, 17 lengths behind the winner. 

Trainer Sean Quinn sent us this update after the race: 

"We’ve been wanting a bit of cut in the ground for Phoenix Of Dreams, so it looked as if Chester would have been ideal for him, but unfortunately they got so much rain it turned the going heavy, and as we saw, he just did not go in it at all. We decided to run him anyway, as it was perfectly safe, and at least now we know he doesn’t want very testing going.

He came out of the race absolutely fine, Jason [Hart] looked after him once he knew he wasn’t enjoying it, and he ate up on Saturday morning, always a good sign of a horse’s wellbeing.

We’ll get him freshened up and go again soon, and we’ll keep all options open as to what sort of race he’ll run in, handicap, maiden, all are possible.  I would like to find him a maiden he could win, he deserves to get his head in front and get that confidence, but we’ll see what’s in the programme book and take it from there."