'The owner wants to retire him but I’ll take him under my wing' - Butler strikes again with Inaam

Trainer John Butler is confident Inaam has plenty left in the tank after the ten-year-old chalked up his 11th victory in the opening 7f handicap.

The son of Camacho scored cosily on his 75th start and Butler believes there are more opportunities available for his stable stalwart, who was registering his second success at Lingfield this month.

Butler said: “He has the ability, we’re very happy with him and we’ll see if we can win one more this month because he’s joint-leader in the battle for the all-weather bonus prize.

“For a ten-year-old to be up there is a great achievement. He should’ve won the last day at Lingfield, but he didn’t and we had to work from there.”

Butler praised the efforts of his team for keeping Inaam in such good form and he has no plans to retire him.

He said: “The owner wants to retire him now but I’ll probably take him under my own wing and we might run him as an 11-year-old.

“We had some ten-year-olds who won last year and it proves we look after our horses.

“We’ve had him since he was five and he’s won every year since. I know some of them were low-grade races, but we’ve always managed to keep him sound.”

Lincoln prospect

The John and Thady Gosden-trained Unforgotten was shortened into 10-1 (from 14) with Paddy Power for the SBK Lincoln after landing the feature mile handicap to maintain his unbeaten start to the year.

It was the first leg of a double for jockey Robert Havlin, who later steered course specialist Smith to his sixth victory from 13 starts at the track in the 2m handicap.

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Upping The Ante star Johnny Dineen joins the Racing Post roster for a weekly Saturday column throughout the jumps season. He'll offer a guide to the weekend action, highlight the key horses and races to watch and share his punting wisdom. Read it every Saturday in the Racing Post or online from 4pm every Friday, exclusively for Members' Club subscribers. Sign up to Members' Club here for more top jumps season insight.