Wendigo takes first chasing step at Worcester

Wendigo has high hopes ahead of his chasing debut in a small yet competitive Richard Davis Memorial Beginners’ Chase field at Worcester.

The six-year-old emerged as one of the leading novice hurdlers trained in the UK last season and will be hoping to continue that trend for handler Jamie Snowden over fences.

The only time he finished out of the first two over hurdles was at the Cheltenham Festival when he lost very little in defeat finishing an eight-length fifth of 20 in the Albert Bartlett behind Jasmin De Vaux.

“He obviously had a great season last year and he’s come back in looking great; bigger, stronger and better,” Snowden said.

“Work has been good, jumping has been excellent and looking forward to getting started.

“He’s got a mark of 145, so he’s got a handicap mark that would suggest he will probably go down that graded route.

“You’d like to hope he’d go to Newbury or somewhere like that after Wednesday and work from there.”

Olly Murphy’s Wade Out is among one of the threats to the market leader, alongside the Ben Pauling-trained Pic Roc, and the Warren Chase trainer believes he also has an exciting prospect in his hands.

“He probably hadn’t achieve what I thought he would have done last year,” Murphy said.

“I’m looking forward to getting him started. He’s got plenty of ability and hopefully he can be a really nice chaser this season.”

Dan Skelton, who narrowly missed out on the trainers’ championship last year, runs Pony Soprano and Excelero goes for Jane Williams.