Lord Yeats One to Watch on Wednesday at Wetherby
If you are looking for a horse to watch on Wednesday afternoon then the one you should be focusing on is Lord Yeats. This high class flat horse won a listed race at Newmarket in the summer of 2017 before stepping up into group company and being very highly tried. We saw him run second behind Order Of St George at Navan at the start of this season, and more recently his final run on the flat came in the Doncaster Cup.
He is far better than your average flat horse who turns to jumping, and promises to bring a bit of intrigue and quality to the card at Wetherby on Wednesday afternoon. At five he is a fully matured horse, and should have no problems handling the different test that is the jumping game.
Trainer Jedd O’Keeffe has recently praised the horse for his jumping ability, decribing him as an excellent jumper. When you consider that O’Keeffe has the hugely talented hurdlers Sam Spinner in his yard, this is certainly high praise for Lord Yeats, coming from a man who knows what he is talking about.
There should be problems for Lord Yeats in terms of staying the distance today, in fact he is in the rare position where he is actually dropping back in trip for this run over hurdles. You usually see horses stepping up from anywhere between a mile to a mile and a half to the minimum two mile jumping trip, and staying is not an issue for these horses. However, Lord Yeats ran over two miles and two furlongs last time out, and goes back to two miles here.
We are likely to see him in a better light over a little further, and there is a chance he could turn out to be a staying hurdler based on the distances he ran over this season on the flat. That will more than likely come in time, but to win a listed race over 1m4f you need to have some speed, so Lord Yeats could get away with the trip today.
If you are looking for something to brighten up your Wednesday, then Lord Yeats is a horse to watch this afternoon at Wetherby. He is a high class flat horse, going hurdling for the very first time and when his optimum distance is worked out, he could be a horse to follow over obstacles this winter.