Charlie Longsdon –Stable Focus

Five seasons ago in his rookie season Charlie Longsdon produced nine winners from 59 runners, the next season produced a further 20winners and the upward curve looked set to continue in the year’s after that. However progressed stalled with the next two campaigns producing 17 winners apiece but trainers like horses once they have shown that they have the talent then they will continue to produce and mount a comeback.

That comeback for Longsdon came when he moved to purpose-built premises in Oxfordshire at Over Norton and the 2010-11 National Hunt season produced a career best 44 winners at a strike-rate of 19%. That season has provided the springboard to move up a few divisions in the training ranks and although he isn’t in the Premier League yet he can’t be far off promotion. Already this year Longsdon has produced 40 winners and his strike-rate has improved to 24%. Those following the horse racing odds online should remember this.

The yard bought plenty of youngsters and most of them have won so far and lots of them have contributed to the total so far. October saw Longsdon register 14 winners from 50 runners at a strike-rate of 28%, November saw a dip in the output from the stable when it looked like the stable had some problems but they have bounced back strongly in December. Four winners have come in the early days of the month and the first winner of the month with Trafalgar Road saw a tremendous training performance as the fragile but talented horse came back to winning ways. Making his chase debut over Sandown’s tricky fences the Bob’s Return gelding jumped with great élan and fluency and looks as though he’ll really come on for that outing.

Despite having plenty of unexposed talent in his team, Longsdon has plenty of solid and more experienced talent with ten of his string rated 130-plus and it will not be a surprise to see the emerging talent that is Hazy Tom heading much higher than his current mark of 143. Hazy Tom looks as though he’ll be heading to Ascot for his next assignment for the 2M novice hurdle that Medermit won three years ago.

Others to look out from the yard are Hayjack, Paintball, Time For Spring and Hidden Keel, all of whom will have a good future from the up and coming yard of Charlie Longsdon.