Racegoers at Ayr have long been used to seeing some of the top horses in training strutting their stuff during the winter months and the 2025/26 jumping season has been of the usual high standard so far.

Trainer Jamie Snowden is no stranger to sending a high-class runner to our Coral Scottish Grand National Festival in April but the handler has already pitched his stable-star WENDIGO into the South Ayrshire mix this season and the young chaser followed up his Christmas Grade 1 third at Kempton with victory in Ayr’s Class 3 Novices’ Chase on January 29.

Wendigo’s impressive round of jumping to win under Gavin Sheehan has propelled the Newbury Grade 2 winner to the upper echelons of the betting market for the Grade 1 Brown Advisory Chase at the Cheltenham Festival and last season’s Grade 1 Albert Bartlett Novices’ Hurdle 5th at the big meeting in March hasn’t been the only big equine name to thrill Ayr patrons this winter.

Sandown’s Grade 1 Scilly Isles Novices’ Chase was won by the Fergal O’Brien trained SIXMILEBRIDGE under jockey Kielan Woods and anyone who’d been at Ayr for our two and a half miles Beginners’ Chase on November 12 would have seen the then 6 year-old win impressively from Lucinda Russell and Michael Scudamore’s Derryhassen Paddy.

The Scottish-trained runner-up had been two places ahead of Wendigo when finishing third in that Albert Bartlett Grade 1 last March and the quality of Sixmilebridge’s Ayr success was rubber-stamped by O’Brien’s horse travelling to Sandown for the Scilly Isles and winning by 5 lengths from Gordon Elliott’s Cork Grade 2 winner Kala Conti.

Elliott’s excellent season back home in Ireland has raised talk of the Cullentra House handler beating the mighty Willie Mullins to the Irish Championship and the trainer had saddled 6 winners from 13 runners at Ayr this season, before the scheduled meeting on Monday February 23.

The trainer’s partnership with champion jockey Sean Bowen has been another feature of the season at Ayr so far, with the rider striking at 48% on his mounts here at the track during 2025/26 and this season’s champion-elect’s now regular trips north have proved highly successful with 11 winners from 23 mounts ahead of our final 5 days racing of the campaign.

As usual, Ayr form looks sure to be to the fore as punters contemplate some of the biggest races to come at Cheltenham, Aintree and Punchestown over the coming weeks and months, with trainers like O’Brien, Snowden and Elliott just 3 of the top handlers who’ll no doubt be preparing to send more runners to our 2026 Coral Scottish Grand National Festival on Friday and Saturday, April 17 and 18.