By Brian Sheerin
Not content with conquering some of the biggest prizes on offer over jumps and on the level, Jessica Harrington is taking aim at the feature race on the snow at St Moritz this weekend with stable stalwart Dark Viper.
The four-year-old Dark Angel gelding has built up a bit of a reputation for filling the runner-up spot on 10 occasions throughout his career but Harrington has revealed that the mercurial talent has taken well to the snow and that she is expecting a bold show in the 1m2f contest on Sunday.
Harrington said, “I'm not in St Moritz – I swapped the snow for a bit of sunshine! But they tell me that he is training very well on the surface and I got a video of him this morning where he appeared to be loving it over there. One thing I can tell you is that it is a very difficult place to get to but – he travelled by boat, road and train – so fingers crossed it can be worthwhile.”
Harrington added, “God knows if he is good enough but he is a funny horse who runs well fresh. We hatched this plan a while back with his owner [Dan Kiely] who likes to go to St Moritz and always wanted to have a runner there.”
With stable jockey Shane Foley in Australia, Harrington's apprentice Keithen Kennedy will come in for the ride aboard Dark Viper, who has won two of his 27 starts.
Harrington's daughter and assistant trainer Kate is on deck at St Moritz where she confirmed the stable's sole runner at the meeting to be in rude health ahead of the feature event.
She said, “It's been a very cool experience and Dark Viper has travelled over very well and has taken everything in his stride. We've had a lot of snow here since we arrived and the track would be riding closer to yielding back home. If it freezes tonight, it will tighten up and get quicker. He is a very ground-versatile horse who has won on the all-weather so we're not really worried about the surface. He seems to run best when fresh so let's see. It's exciting to have a runner here and hopefully he can run well.”
Dark Viper will line out against 12 other rivals, including last year's winner, the Andreas Schärer-trained Saadi (Saxon Warrior). Meanwhile, British-based trainers Ian Williams and Ralph Beckett will also be represented in the contest with Parlando (Dubawi) and Lord Melbourne (Wootton Bassett) respectively.
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