GREY ABBEY has the class to grab tomorrow's feature race at Haydock, the £50,000 three-mile Edward Hanmer Chase.

There are few finer sights in jump racing than witnessing a pack of seasoned chasers winging over Haydock's notoriously stiff steeplechase fences. Jumping at such speed inevitably means mistakes are costly so it generally pays to stick with normally foot-perfect individuals such as Grey Abbey, who ran an absolute blinder when fourth on his comeback run in the valuable Charlie Hall Chase at Wetherby last month.

Barry Murtagh's eight-year-old fleet-of-foot gelding pinged the majority of his fences that day before lack of peak condition told in the closing stages. Still, there was no disgrace in finishing fourth just behind the 2001 Scottish National hero, Gingembre, not to mention being hard on the heels of the ultra-classy Cheltenham Festival scorers, Marlborough and Hussard Collonges.

Surely all the better for the pipe opener, Grey Abbey (2.10) will hopefully have too much finishing speed for Kingsmark, bidding to record an unprecedented third win in a row in the sought-after contest.

Martin Todhunter's chunky nine-year-old goes particularly well when fresh therefore lack of a recent outing need not be a worry to his backers. However, of much more concern is his current lofty handicap mark of 157, a cool 9lb higher than when successful in 2001.

In view of his wonderful course record it looks as if Kingsmark is bound to put in another superb effort, but he could well be anchored by the extra weight as the jockeys begin to shovel on the coal when things get serious over the final half-mile.

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