Following the decision not to declare Lady Mendoza at either Doncaster or Kelso this week, your Rebecca Menzies-trained mare has been given initial entries at Catterick on New Year’s Day, and at Ayr the following day, with her trainer also looking at other future options for her eagerly-anticipated second run.

We spoke to Rebecca today and this is what she had to say:

"Kelso went heavy, so that would not have been suitable ground for Lady Mendoza, and 16 runners were declared for the Doncaster race, so we’ll keep our powder dry and wait for a smaller field target instead. We really like this mare, and if we place her right I think we can go somewhere with a live chance, although there are never any guarantees obviously!

I wouldn’t be scared to take on a horse rated 120, 125, but I wouldn’t want to take on a host of them in one go, as we really want to find the best chance of a winning opportunity, so we’ve entered her at Catterick on New Year’s Day – their opening race – and at Ayr on the 2nd, again, in their opener, and again we’ll keep an eye on the weather forecast as we don’t want testing ground for her, and we’ll also monitor her likely opposition at both tracks.

All novice hurdles are attracting plenty of runners at the moment as we lost those meetings to the cold snap, but we’ll sit tight and the right race will come for her, the important thing is she is fit and well and we can keep her ticking over at home, and it will be exciting when the right race comes along."


Click here to watch Rebecca and Nathan Moscrop (jockey) as they look back at Lady Mendoza's debut run at Newcastle