Mark Walford on Into Overdrive
It’s a sign of the times that only a select few National Hunt trainers based in Britain will head to this year’s Cheltenham Festival with what could be described as a strong chance of having a winner, such has been the dominance of the Irish at the meeting in recent years.
And that’s just Britain as a whole. It has become even more of a struggle for trainers based in the North to make an impact at the showpiece event in the sport.
For context, the North’s tally at the Festival in the last decade stands at just three winners and it’s remarkable to think now that only 11 years ago northern-trained runners won six of the 27 races at the meeting – one more than the whole of Britain achieved in 2021.
The Ultima Handicap Chase has been the saving grace for the North in the last couple of years. West Yorkshire trainer Sue Smith won the 2021 edition with the popular veteran Vintage Clouds and last year it was Lucinda Russell, based in Kinross in Scotland, who stepped up with Corach Rambler.
Russell appears to have at least two interesting runners to go to war with at this year’s Festival, including Corach Rambler, who is tasked with trying to defend his Ultima crown from a 6lb higher mark than last year.
Stablemate Ahoy Senor is also set to run in the blue riband of National Hunt racing, the Cheltenham Gold Cup, having won the Cotswold Chase at the same course last time, when leading home a one-two for the North with fellow Gold Cup contender Sounds Russian – trained in Norton, North Yorkshire by Ruth Jefferson – chasing him home.
It’s not out of the question that one of that pair could at least hit the frame in the Gold Cup, a race which was last won by a northern-trained runner in 1993 when Peter Beaumont struck with Jodami.
However, once again it’s the Ultima which appears to give the North its best chance of success at the 2023 Cheltenham Festival as Corach Rambler is joined towards the head of the ante-post betting by Into Overdrive, who is trained in Sheriff Hutton, North Yorkshire by Mark Walford, a man seeking his first winner at the meeting.
Incidentally, Corach Rambler and Into Overdrive go a long way back having first met when the latter was making his Rules debut in a novice hurdle at Carlisle in March 2021. Into Overdrive was sent off the 40/1 outsider and duly trailed in last of the four runners behind Corach Rambler, who overturned the odds-on favourite to make it two from three over hurdles.
From humble beginnings to smart handicapper
Before that debut under Rules, Into Overdrive had hit the frame in a couple of points for his owner/breeder Wendy Hamilton, who then made the decision to put him into training with Walford at a yard where her son, Jamie, is the number one rider and where her horse has gone from strength to strength over the last couple of years.
Explaining how Into Overdrive came to be in his hands, Walford said: “Wendy had run the other horses that she’d bred out of the same mare in point-to-points and she’d sold them on after they’d won. This lad finished second and third, so he didn’t have a huge amount of value. They decided to send him into training and, with Jamie riding for us, they were keen for him to come here.
“We didn’t think he was a superstar when we got him, far from it really. We were quite surprised when he won a novice hurdle, which he did quite well at Carlisle. Last year he was wrong like most of our horses and his first few runs of that year were fairly average. It was about this time last year he won at Carlisle and since then he’s been unbelievable really.”
Unbelievable just about sums it up as Into Overdrive has now five of his last six starts over fences. After completing a hat-trick with a wide-margin success at Perth on his final start of last season, he then picked up where he left off when making a winning return to action at Wetherby in October. However, it was when his winning run came to an end in the Rehearsal Chase at Newcastle the following month (watch the replay below) that Walford allowed himself to get a bit more excited.
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Walford said: “Newcastle was the race where I really thought ‘yeah, we’ve got something very decent on our hands here’. It was a good race at Wetherby that he won before, but the race at Newcastle was a massive step up and that was the day we realised we could compete in all the best handicaps.
“He then went and won the Rowland Meyrick. It was a tough race and Sounds Russian gave him a bit of a fright coming up the run-in. He really toughed it out and Jamie gets on with him wonderfully well. He hasn’t put a foot wrong as well as the horse. Hopefully, we can get him to Cheltenham in the good form he seems to be in at the moment.”
It hasn’t been entirely smooth sailing since that Wetherby win on Boxing Day (watch the replay below) as a dirty scope forced Into Overdrive to miss the Sky Bet Chase at Doncaster towards the end of January, but he is reported to have left that setback firmly behind him and Walford can take encouragement from the way the Rowland Meyrick has worked out in his absence, with Sounds Russian going on to run a cracker when filling the same position in the Cotswold.
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Into Overdrive still on the way up
Unlike Sounds Russian, Into Overdrive is still some way off Gold Cup class – he was receiving 15lb from the runner-up at Wetherby – but it’s certainly all systems go for the Ultima where he’ll line up from a BHA mark of 147, fully 35lb higher than when his winning run over fences began.
It won’t be an easy task, but the eight-year-old’s improvement shows no signs of slowing down and Walford is daring to dream about what a Festival success against the best of Ireland and the rest of Britain would mean to him and the whole team.
He said: “I think all his form would suggest he’s on an upward curve. He’ll need to be to win at Cheltenham, because you have to have a few pounds in hand.
“Although he won, Jamie said at Wetherby that he didn’t give him the same feel as he did at Newcastle, he wasn’t that bold, enthusiastic horse. He won so we couldn’t complain, but he maybe wasn’t completely bang on that day and that was possibly the start of what was wrong with him, hence why we got the dirty scope before Doncaster.
“It’s been a huge team effort and everyone keeps telling me it’s great that I’ve got a runner at Cheltenham, but I see it more as the yard has got a runner. Everyone is involved and it’s good for us all. We’re all looking forward to it and, hopefully, we can get him there in good form and he can improve a little bit more.
“If we could be in the places we’d be delighted and if we won it would be a bit of a dream for what is still a smallish yard compared to some of the yards that will be having runners at Cheltenham. To get a chance of a winner there is a big thing for us.”
What does the future have in store?
As for what happens after Cheltenham, Corach Rambler already features among the market leaders for the Grand National, but Aintree was ruled out at an early stage for Into Overdrive after some long discussions between trainer, jockey and owner.
Walford hasn’t ruled out a run in the 2024 Grand National, though, while Graded races could also come into the equation soon enough for a horse described by his trainer as comfortably the best he’s trained.
He added: “We had a lot of discussions about the National and to go for a race like that we needed everyone to be 100% on board. We had our doubts and we didn’t want to spoil him when everything was going so well. We’ll maybe have a look at the Scottish National or the bet365 Gold Cup after Cheltenham if it goes well. That will be him for the season.
“If his jumping holds up well at Cheltenham and he shows he’s got the stamina if we run him in the Scottish National, we may well have a look at the National next year. And it’s not out of the question that he could run in Graded races.
“We saw in the Rowland Meyrick that he’s got a little bit to improve because Sounds Russian had about a stone more. Realistically, that’s how much we need to improve to be in with a chance in a Graded race, but it’s certainly not impossible.
“We’re just lucky to have him and glad that Michael and Wendy sent him our way. It’s nice to have something of that quality.”
Overdrive success underpins breakthrough season
There has been quantity to go with the increased quality at the yard, too. As of Thursday morning, only 35 National Hunt trainers had saddled more winners in Britain this season than Walford, who is now up to 24 after Moonlight Glory won the conditional jockeys’ handicap hurdle on Saturday’s card at Newcastle.
Never before has Walford’s seasonal tally surpassed 23 winners – a tally he reached once back in 2016/17 – so the fact he’s already done so with over eight weeks of the campaign still remaining is indicative of a yard firmly on the up. So too is the fact he’s already pocketed over £280,000 in total prize money won, nearly double his haul of last season.
Into Overdrive, of course, has contributed significantly to Walford’s earnings in 2022/23, but it’s worth touching on how well the stable has been doing generally this season and what the man at the helm attributes that to.
“We’ve been lucky”, Walford said simply when I put that question to him. “All of our owners have supported us with a few new horses and we’ve got a great team at home which is the key thing. We’re getting more and more horses and you need the right people in the right places which I think we’ve got.
“The previous season we had a virus in the yard and we had an absolute nightmare all the way through the winter. We just couldn’t get our horses right at all. It took until this time last year for them to come into any sort of form, but since then we’ve managed to keep them healthy and it’s just been completely different this season.”
With more horses in his care – and happy and healthy horses at that – Walford has been able to make a significant impact on the northern jumps racing scene this winter from his base in Sheriff Hutton, North Yorkshire.
He’s certainly keeping good company with the likes of Donald McCain (97), Oliver Greenall and Josh Guerriero (50), Lucinda Russell (48), Micky Hammond (33), Rebecca Menzies (33) and Nicky Richards (25), the only trainers based in the North of the UK to have saddled more winners than him during the current campaign.
The big question now is whether any of them can get on the scoreboard at the Festival and, in the shape of Into Overdrive, Walford looks to have as strong a chance as any.
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