Nicky Henderson© Photo Healy Racing
Nicky Henderson was full of praise for Windsor after jump racing returned to the east Berkshire track for the first time in 19 years.
Despite seeing two odds-on favourites beaten on Sunday, the Lambourn handler was thrilled to have the National Hunt track reinstated.
“The track looks brilliant. We’ve been quite involved all the way through. At the beginning of last season we actually brought Jonbon here as he quite likes an away day. They’ve had a couple of trial days as well. I think it’s wonderful,” said Henderson.
“I’m probably the only trainer who can remember being here before, sadly! I can remember it quite well.
“I rode a winner round here and we had our first ever double as a trainer here in 1978.
“We’ve been practicing the bend quite a bit, I’m not sure why that first race didn’t fill more but four runners was a nice start, it’s on the right configuration now.”
Further jumps action at the course looked a long way off when the decision was taken in 2005 to run it is a Flat-only track, but when Arena Racing Company, who own Windsor, came up with the idea of the Winter Million meeting, it was seen as the ideal venue – the only trouble being at the time it did not stage National Hunt racing.
In the interim the Winter Million has been held at Lingfield, when the weather allowed, but this season it will form part of the Berkshire Winter Million, with Ascot’s Clarence House card in the middle of the two days in January.
Mark Spincer, group operations director for ARC told Sky Sports Racing: “It’s a really good crowd but it wouldn’t be a raceday without a few challenges and the boats (transporting racegoers) got cancelled very late because the Thames is too high, which put a bit more pressure on the taxis.
“We were hoping for 5,000 and it looks like being pretty close to that.
“Credit will go to Martin Cruddace (CEO) and quite rightly. He had us all in a board meeting saying he wanted to return jumping to Windsor. Out of that came the Winter Million but we weren’t ready so it took us a couple of years to get Windsor ready, hence why the Winter Million started at Lingfield.
“Once we got everything ready we had a conversation with Ascot and they were excited to be partners with us and there’s the three days.”
The Windsor track was previously a figure of eight, but remedial work was carried out and it is now a more conventional layout.
Spincer added: “There have been a lot of people involved in getting us to where we are now, the British Horseracing Authority have been a big help. It’s taken a fairly sizeable chequebook to get where we are, in the region of £400,000 to £500,000 but we’ve also spent money on the track which will benefit Flat and jumps.
“The new layout was down to Richard Langley and Charlie Moore. They wouldn’t allow us to go back to a figure of eight on the grounds that in this day and age you wouldn’t want horses potentially running back on to themselves, so we accepted that and had to find a way to come up with a solution.”
Trainer Jamie Snowden was another who had taken part in the pre-racing gallops.
He said: “We came down here for a couple of gallops and it’s great that Windsor is opening up. It’s great to have another turf track on our doorstep, it’s only 45 minutes from Lambourn so we came down with two today.
“It all appeared fine after the first. The concern was with it being a tight track that if you got in front you might stay in front, but the race changed up the home straight.”
Champion jockey Harry Cobden won the first race on Emma Lavelle’s Ma Shantou.
“It was quite interesting to walk the track and ride it as well, it’s intriguing but it’s something different,” said Cobden.
“I thought it walked tight but I didn’t think it rode as bad as it walked, I’ve got no complaints. The ground was pretty testing, it was hard work out there.”
