TWO-TIME winner Captain Brown leads James Moffatt's six-strong assault on the Totepool Cartmel Cup on Saturday.

The Captain, trained just down the road from the racecourse at Pit Farm Stables, will aim for a historic treble as he looks to win the valuable prize for a third year in a row.

Still only nine years old, Moffatt's gelding usually comes into his own in this race and is likely to have the assistance of top jockey Brian Hughes in the saddle.

“Captain Brown will definitely run on Saturday,” said Moffatt. “He seems to love this race and is still only nine, so I expect him to run well. He is relatively lightly-raced and seems to be in good form as the race approaches.

Not that he will be the stable’s only representative with Moffatt having entered six horses for the race, of which he says “probably three or four will run, though I am not ruling out any of them just yet”.

As well as Captain Brown, Moffatt’s strong hand for the race includes Lough Kent, who is twice a winner at Cartmel this season, including a sensational defeat of Captain Brown in a valuable hurdle at the June meeting.

Lough Kent goes particularly well for the stable’s conditional jockey, Barrow-born Charlotte Jones, who will have the ride again on Saturday.

Providing strong support to the big two are Idder, Fantasy King, Nicolas Chauvin and Golden Town.

“As well as the big race on Saturday, I shall have lots of runners in the other races, and will also have a big team on Monday” said Moffatt, who is aiming to win the Cartmel Trainers Challenge, as leading trainer at the track, for a third successive season.

This weekend’s two-day meeting will bring the curtain down on Cartmel’s 2017 programme and will be a bittersweet occasion for racecourse supremo Jonathan Garratt, who is leaving to take up a similar role at Kelso.

Under his stewardship of the past seven years, the quality and quantity of the racing has improved immensely at Cartmel, while the facilities at the track, though limited by the planning restrictions in the National Park, have also reached new levels.

Saturday’s seven-race card gets underway with the E-Catering Novices Hurdle at 2.15pm, and also features the final race in the Hadwins Motor Group Mares Hurdle Series, which carries a £1,000 bonus prize for the overall winning stable.