'It's been touch and go but we have stayed afloat' - flood-hit trainer records career-best seasonal tally

What a turnaround. Barely four months after Storm Babet washed away much of her yard, Mel Rowley beat her best seasonal tally when scoring with Marmalade Time and promptly set her sights on Cheltenham next week.

Late last October, torrents of water caused extraordinary flooding at her Shropshire base, as water coming off the road met the nearby stream and created "a perfect storm."

The trainer has managed to keep going through a wet winter, although she said: "We've been on high flood alert since then because just about every week the rain comes lashing down, the stream starts coming up and we think, 'Here we go again!'

"It's been touch and go a couple of times but we have stayed afloat, just.

"There's still a lot of work to be done but we can't get on the ground. We'll have to do it in the spring if and when everything finally dries up. We've just moved everything onto higher ground which means we've been able to carry on. It's not ideal ground. But we're not in an ideal world, are we?"

Marmalade Time made all under Charlie Hammond in the mares' novice hurdle to give Rowley her 15th winner of the season, beating her total from 2021-22.

"Happy days," she said. "I'm full of cold and it certainly perked me up no end. I think the ground was the key, she wouldn't necessarily have a massive turn of foot at the end of a race but she just keeps galloping."

She hopes that Lingfield and Aintree winner Kyntara will also keep galloping in the Pertemps Hurdle Final at Cheltenham next week.

"We could do with it raining for him, he definitely prefers a soft surface," said the trainer. "For an older horse, he's still very young-legged and he's improving all the time.

"He's in very fine form and we'd like to think he can be competitive. If he ran a big race, it would be fairytale stuff." 

Students of form

For the second day running the crowd — and atmosphere — was multiplied hugely by a massive contingent of students, brought in by the coachload thanks to Dom Matcham's pioneering organisation Invades.

"There are 4,600 here today," said Matcham, who has been arranging student trips to the races since 2019 and now operates on both sides of the world.

"Yesterday we had 6,300 here, 2,000 at Newbury and 3,000 at Newcastle racecourse in 2019."

Doncaster executive director Rachel Harwood welcomed the influx, on an afternoon when the course was otherwise expecting around 1,000 racegoers.

"It makes a big difference," she said. "They are not here to drink, they watch the racing and create a lot of atmosphere."

Horse numbers were thinner on the ground, with mass withdrawals as the going had become considerably softer since declarations were made. No fewer than 26 of the 62 intended runners were taken out due to the ground. 

Tjade Collier was worried about the ground for Ladronne but let him take his chance and his ten-year-old gave William Maggs his first chase winner.

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