'It's a bizarre situation' - quick ground leads to walkover for Captain Teague in £40,000 novice chase at Exeter

Captain Teague was the beneficiary of a walkover in the £40,000 novice chase at Exeter after the other two runners were taken out due to the quick ground.

Last season’s Challow Novices’ Hurdle winner, trained by Paul Nicholls, was set to make his chasing debut but had to jump no fences, with Harry Cobden’s mount only required to gallop from the furlong marker to the winning line.

Deafening Silence was first taken out of the race just before 1pm, with trainer Dan Skelton withdrawing four runners on the card due to the going, described as good. Sue Gardner took the same stance with Daring Plan, the initial outsider of three, after the second race at 1.15pm.

Nicholls said on ITV: “It’s a bizarre situation. Sue obviously thinks the ground is fast enough and I’d say the chase track might be a bit slippery.

“It’s no one’s fault - the ground has just dried up and they can’t water here. Welfare is a big issue with horses and trainers have to do the right thing by their horse. You can’t take any chances and if you have a horse who wants a bit of cut in the ground then you’re not going to run."

He added: "We all want to run and if that was good to soft, there would have been ten runners. Nobody is trying to be clever. We’re fit for another day, he’s a nice horse and we can’t wait to get going properly. We’ll go back to the drawing board and find something else.”

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