Olly Murphy column: my best chance at Newbury and more

Touch wood, our runners have started really well. We have had plenty of big Saturday winners, so hopefully we have started as we mean to go on. 

We had a bit of a frustrating weekend at Haydock last weekend, and Ascot, but that’s the way it goes. Roll on Newbury at the weekend!

The horses are simply in good nick. They are healthy and well, and hopefully we are running them in the right races and have got a nice type of horse to run as well, so it is a bit of everything. Our strike-rate is good at the moment, we are running plenty of horses and we are very, very happy with how things are going so far. 

He has got a big stable, a lot of horses, and quality, and he is very, very good at his job. He may well be over the hill and gone, but if we can finish in the top five in the trainers' championship, then I will be over the moon. I finished in the top five last year, which was great, so if we could finish a spot further up then it would be brilliant. 

Mixing it with the big lads is where we want to be.

I speakto him plenty on the phone. He is an avid fan of his racing as I am with football, and I have been to the football with him plus he enjoys his racing. We speak to each other regularly. He is a good fella to train for, we have a few horses with him, and he's a good man. 

He is a big supporter of mine, Paul Nicholls, Dan Skelton and the Twiston-Davies’ as well. He's a good man to have. 

There is a lot of prize money on this weekend at Newbury. It's one of the biggest two-day Festivals we have outside of Cheltenham and Aintree, so it is nice to have four or five runners both days. We have some good each-way chances, and good money on offer, and hopefully we will be very competitive. Here are some of my key contenders:

He had a very good prep run at Carlisle. He has been trained for this race and has a nice-ish weight, so it will be dead competitive. It is one of the biggest handicaps of the season, and we are very much looking forward to running him. 

He’s in very good form. He won the race last year, and he has a penalty, which won't make life easy, but he likes the track, is in very good form, and is fit and well, so fingers crossed he can defend his crown. 

He is going to run, he is in good form and is having his first run for me. I am still learning about him, but I am very happy with him. Hopefully he can win a race at some point this season. It wouldn't surprise me if he ran very well, he is a high class horse, coming from a very good trainer. 

I am really looking forward to running Kingston Pride in the Coral John Francome Novices' Chase (1.50) on Friday. He is a very smart horse, and has a real live chance. 

I am not sure [where he will go]. He will have an entry at Cheltenham in December as well, but he loves soft ground, and he ran very well at Carlisle, he came to win the race and just got tired so hopefully he will come forward from his first run, he can be competitive in those novice staying handicaps. 

Unlikely we will have many there. We will get Strong Leader out of the way this weekend, the only one could be him maybe at the three mile grade 1 at Leopardstown as he likes going left-handed and it is a flat track as well, it could be a possibility but we won't send a massive team over, we will try and win as much prize money over here as we can.