Champion jockey Richard Hughes eyes two of trainer Richard Hannon's hopes for the new flat season
Tiggy Wiggy - with Richard Hughes - wins the Cheveley Park Stakes (September 2014) (photograph by Steven Cargill)Richard Hughes is looking forward eagerly to see how two of Richard Hannon's great successes of the 2014 flat season will shape up now they have graduated from two- year-old to three-year-old status: Tiggy Wiggy and Ivawood.
The bay filly Tiggy Wiggy won five of her seven starts on turf - with Hughes riding her in four of those races.
Marlborough News Online asked Richard Hughes whether, now she's a three-year-old, she can have similar successes this season? "Don't know. Only she knows that. Before she raced, she was a menace in the yard - used to take off a bit. When she won her first outing by seven lengths we were amazed - she was never meant to be this good."
The day before her appearance at Ascot last June, she got loose and was out for about half-an-hour. Hughes thinks she may have calmed down: "She's not as small a horse as some people think, and she got bigger over the winter."
She is set to make her first appearance in mid-April at Newbury's Dubai Duty Free Spring Trials meeting: "She'll go for seven furlongs - and if she gets that, she'll go for a mile. She's a bit of freak - we'll have to give her the benefit and try the distance - if not she'll go for sprints."
She is already entered for the 1000 Guineas at the beginning of May.
Richard Hughes believes the bay colt Ivawood is a different matter altogether: "He's the real deal. We have huge belief in him - I've no doubt he'll stay."
Ivawood won three out of his four races as a two-year-old - all partnered with Richard Hughes. For a two-year-old Ivawood was a very big horse. After his Goodwood victory last year Richard Hannon was also optimistic about his future: “Physically he looks streets ahead of a lot of two-year-olds, and I don’t think he will become ‘just a two-year-old’."
Ivawood came second at Newmarket in October - and Hughes believes that at that time he was having some growing pains in his bones. Over six furlongs he came home second to Charming Thought.
He is entered for Newbury's mid-April Greenham Stakes - seen as a trial for the 2,000 Guineas. The Richard Hughes-Richard Hannon Senior combination last won this seven furlong race in 2013 with Olympic Glory.
And he is entered for May's Qipco 2,000 Guineas over a mile at Newmarket.