Zacony Rebel delivers a flying start ahead of the new jump season for Toby Lawes

Toby Lawes is relishing the prospect of his third season training after Zacony Rebel took the 2m1½f novices' hurdle by a commanding five and a half lengths to kickstart the approaching jumps season.

Lawes, who spent five years as assistant to Nicky Henderson at Seven Barrows, said: "I bought him just before Christmas when I started training [2019] and he's a horse I've always really liked.

"James [Bowen] gave him a lovely patient ride to let him find his feet, let the race pan out in front of him and then timed it well.

"It's the first real weekend of racing of the season for us as we didn't really have any summer runners, so it's great. We aim them to be ready around the beginning of October and we'll probably be up to around 20 horses by the time we build up to the winter."

Merry Moores

Lawes was unable to complete a double after his other runner Nashville Napper ran a solid race to finish third in the 2m3f handicap hurdle behind runaway-winner Jumping Cats, trained by Gary Moore and ridden by son Jamie.

The Sussex-based trainer followed up the 11-length win with a quickfire double as odds-on favourite Mr Tickle completed a hat-trick in the 3m2f conditional handicap chase in the hands of Niall Houlihan.

Smith strikes

On a good day for Sussex trainers, Suzy Smith landed the feature 2m5½f handicap chase with the £25,000 recruit Pilbara under Charlie Hammond, who won by a neck on only his third start since switching from the yard of Emmet Mullins.

Results, replays and analysis

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