Glorious End to Great Season

Gloire D’Athon rounded off a brilliant season for his owner, Mrs Jenny Pitman, and the whole yard by winning the valuable Josh Gifford Novices Handicap Chase on the final day of the 2022/23 season at Sandown Park on 29 April. This was Glory’s 4th win from just 5 starts over chase fences since joining the yard (and he was 2nd on his only other chase!) and his second win at Sandown – he also clocked up two seconds and one other placed finish in his 4 hurdle races for us. The exciting fact is that he grows in confidence and ability with each race. This was an impressively assured round of jumping over Sandown’s famous and testing fences. Aidan Coleman gave him a superb ride but, as he said, Glory made it easy by responding perfectly to Aidan asking him to go long or short and jumped with speed and accuracy.  He clearly loves his racing and there is surely more to come from him.

Glory’s success takes the yard’s total wins for the season into double figures and makes it the best season ever for the yard in terms of prize money won. Sarah achieved a remarkable win strike rate of 19% for the season, one of the very best strike rates of all the top 100 trainers.

The images of Glory jumping and in the winner’s enclosure are courtesy of Megan of sandownracingimages.com.