EVEN though the Beast from the East has blown over, local trainers haven’t had many runners in the last week, yet David Evans still keeps up a steady supply of winners.

His team must have mixed feelings about days like Saturday, when they had runners at a Chelmsford evening meeting.

This time the long drive home after the last on the card, at 9.15, was made easier thanks to Miniature Daffodil’s victory in that race. The three-year-old gelding, who is owned by Ffos Las’s owner Dai Walters, had three runs down the field before moving to Evans’s stable. He was dropped into a Class 6 for his handicap debut and finished a close fifth. Stepped up to a mile and a quarter for the first time, he made no mistake on this, his second run for the yard.

He was carrying a featherweight seven stone twelve pounds, with Gabriele Malune on board.

Evans has been quick to capitalise on the sudden emergence of this apprentice. He rode a total of three winners in 2015 and 2016, but perseverance paid off and he rode nine in 2017. So far this year he’s already added another twelve, so that his claim has gone down to five pounds. His is a name that many punters won’t recognise but don’t dismiss him when you see Evans has put him up again.

Sean Bowen’s exceptional performance at Hereford on Saturday, riding four winners from four rides for four different trainers, hasn’t had the credit it deserves. The last of them was when riding Beau Bay for Dr Richard Newland. He’d made a lot of the running until being overtaken before the penultimate fence. He fought back without getting in front, but his opponent edged left after the last and the stewards decided that manoeuvre cost him more ground than the neck he was beaten by. They reversed the placings and gave Bowen his fourth winner of the meeting, the first time he had achieved that feat.

Welsh trainers have a few runners at Cheltenham this week.

Evan Williams has been having a quiet spell (before Monday, just one winner since 2 February) and he will be hoping Prime Venture and King’s Odyssey make the cut for the Cheltenham handicaps they are entered in on Thursday.

Tim Vaughan’s Dadsintrouble will hopefully get in a race on Thursday or Friday but he is handicapped up to his best form of twelve months ago.

Peter Bowen runs Jeannot De Nonant in the Coral Cup this afternoon but the 33/1 shot will find it tough to follow up his Southwell success two weeks ago. His son Mickey runs Ffos Las winner Wells De Lune in the Foxhunters on Friday.

Places are still available for the Gold Cup lunch in Chepstow Racecourse’s Silks restaurant on Friday. You’ll be able to enjoy the drama of the Festival from the comfort of your table, where you’ll have access to a bookmaker who will take your bets. There’ll be a sweepstake, a raffle and an auction. What you won’t have is 70,000 other people jostling you, as they will all be at Cheltenham.