WHILE the weather was more reflective of a jumping fixture, with lots of rain in the area, Catterick's meeting on Wednesday afternoon proved to be a good one for local trainers.

The feature handicap went the way of Ann Duffield and PJ McDonald with Brockholes, who appears a very well-handicapped horse.

Duffield hopes the handicapper does not go overboard when assessing the winner, who was only having her second run for the yard since leaving Richard Fahey along with all the other David Armstrong-owned horses.

Brockholes laughed at her opening mark of 69 as what appeared to be a competitive seven-furlong handicap was turned into a procession, McDonald steering Brockholes to a three-and-a-half-length victory over Invermere.

"She's done it very well," said Duffield.

"Her first run for us at Carlisle was promising and it turns out it was a very warm race – the winner was second in a Listed race the other day.

"She's obviously handled the soft ground very well, but she's also gone on quick ground, so she's very versatile.

"She's done well physically and now we'll just have to see what the handicapper does.

"It's nice to finally have a winner. We've been having lots of placed horses and it's been frustrating.

"I think we worked out that, from 105 runners, 54 had been in the first four, yet we've not had many winners.

"The weather certainly isn't helping the fillies, that's for sure."

Mark Johnston continues to churn out the winners and Rusumaat took full advantage of a drop in class for the opening Median Auction Stakes.

While he failed to cut much ice in the Coventry Stakes at Royal Ascot, he had shown at Redcar the time before that he was above average and Joe Fanning made all the running on the way to a four-and-a-half-length win.

Another Middleham trainer, Patrick Holmes, was also on the mark thanks to Filydelphia, who received a fine ride from Rachel Richardson.

Looking back to last weekend, another Middleham horse worth keeping an eye on is Florenza, a filly trained by Chris Fairhurst and ridden to victory by Andrew Elliott.

This weekend's big race is the Coral Eclipse at Sandown and Roger Charlton has every intention of running Time Test despite the recent rain around.

The Beckhampton handler reports plans for the four-year-old remain unchanged and he is on course to go for the mile-and-a-quarter Group One prize.

Having missed an intended outing in the Prince of Wales's Stakes at Royal Ascot on account of the soft ground, the son of Dubawi has been restricted to just one start this season, which resulted in a narrow victory in the Brigadier Gerard Stakes at the Esher course in May.

Charlton said: "The plan is to run Time Test, as it was before. Everything has gone to plan and the horse is absolutely fine. His last bit of work went perfectly well.

"It's all been said before about why he hasn't run and people can read into what they like, but it is frustrating.

"Let's wait until Saturday to see what the ground is like as there is no point guessing.

"It could be an exciting clash with The Gurkha, but I am not going to make any bold statements about it."

Although the round course is officially good to soft at present, clerk of the course Andrew Cooper expects conditions to be closer to good tomorrow, should the forecast be correct.

Cooper said on Wednesday: "I think we continue to improve here. In terms of a going report, at the moment I've left the round course as good to soft as that is what it was when I walked it this morning.

"Since then, we have had some patchy drizzle, but no more than that. It is a pretty overcast day and I am not anticipating us getting a great deal in terms of rain.

"It doesn't look like it is going to be as soft as we thought earlier in the week based on where we were and the forecast we have been given.

"Almost every day we are getting some degree of unsettled weather with the chance of a shower, but nothing producing any great amounts of rain.

"In the short term, we will be on the soft side of good and we will probably be in that sort of territory come Friday.

"It is certainly not looking like it is going to be soft ground. I suspect it might be on the slow side of good. That is looking the likely outcome."