Alice's unwanted travels

A basenji writes:
Suffered the indignity of being taken for a walk on a lead today. Hrmph. And as if that wasn't bad enough I had to go with that big idiot Stan. He barked at two passing huskies and threw himself between them and me. As if I need protecting. Absolutely no chance to rummage through dustbins as the greyhound kept blowing my cover. Life is so unfair. Guess I'll have to wait until they go out to pedigree group and sneak out through the catflap ...

... Um, well, er ... This is meant to be my weblog, Alice, so if you don't mind I'll take over now. Thank you very much. Right, to move onto more pertinent topics. Yes, 48-hour declarations. You're spot-on Jaggers, they aren't that big an issue. I actually welcome them from my own point of view, but I've never really gone in for all that pretending-to-be-really-professional-and-leaving-everything-until-the-last-minute shite. You either want to run in the race or you don't. And if you declare and the horse subsequently goes amiss, forceing you to change your mind, you scratch. I actually declare two days beforehand anyway, as one can declare the previous afternoon (which now means I declare three days in advance) which I much prefer as I'd rather get it done, than leave it and forget about it while one is tied up with the 1,001 things one is doing in the morning. Once in a while I declare the previous afternoon and circumstances change, so one cancels the declaration the next morning prior to the deadline. But really it's not a major issue. Why I like earlier declaration times is because at least half the horses I declare are possible eliminatees (see previous blog), so at least one finds out in good time if one is getting a run, and everyone can then plan the trip. It's particularly good for owners who live a distance away from the meeting, or who just need to know whether to book a day off work. All these factors don't really apply in the major stables, so those trainers wouldn't really think like that. Poor members of the A N Other Partnership have never seen Rem Time run over here because everytime she's run she's been borderline to get in, and not knowing until the eleventh hour makes it awkward for booking flights from south west Ireland. Of course, the one negative aspect is in times of uncertain weather, and the later the declaration time, the more chance of one making an accurate assessment of whether ground conditions will be to one's horse's liking. Just now is a good example of that. Of course if one declares and the ground changes, one can just scratch. The trouble comes when one declares based on a weather forecast that suggests the ground will change, and then the forecast proves inaccurate: one can't scratch without penalty because the ground hasn't changed. My suggestion is that the track makes its best guess as to what the ground will be on raceday, and one can scratch if that proves not to be the case. Of course one can always scratch without penalty if the horse goes to the track, because that shows a keenness to run, and if one is there and not happy with the racing surface one should never have to risk one's horse on it, but travelling horses is so bloody expensive nowadays that one doesn't want a transport bill of several hundred pounds just to be able to scratch without penalty. For a Newmarket trainer having runners here it's easy - for Friday I will just declare My Obsession anyway; if it rains I'll run him, and if it doesn't I'll just ride him up to the July Course, at no cost, and tell them he's not running - but otherwise one will be presented with a big bill whichever option one choses. So, overall, on balance it will suit me, but there will be the odd time when I get the weather wrong and either declare a horse who oughtn't to run, or not declare a horse who should, it turns out, be running. Is it good for racing? I don't know. There will definitely be more non-runners which will piss off punters and racegoers (bad), but it will mean racing gets into evening papers more easily (good, I suppose, even though I'm not convinced anyone actually reads evening papers) and it will increase the likelihood of overseas audiences watching and betting on UK racing (good in theory, irrelevant in practice I suspect). So earlier declaration times suit me, but are probably on balance marginally a bad thing for racing as a whole. But it's not the most signficant hill of beans we'll ever encounter. I remember Luca using a very good phrase a while back - "not fundamentally important" - and I think that sums it up.

Heavens, haven't I wasted an acre of space on such a great triviality. But then one could say that about this whole website, and I won't let that put me off. What else have we got? Glorious Goodwood. I'm really looking forward to the Goodwood Cup. (Mind you, after the treat provided by the Hurricane and his two fine adversaries, we've had enough excitement to keep us going for a while. Wouldn't it be wonderful if Coolmore make a publicity video of his races run to a soundtrack of Bob Dylan's Hurricane?) It will be great to see the mighty Yeets, as we'll join Dean McKeown in pronouncing his name. I hope he'll be as majestic as the mighty Iffraaj was today. They must be kicking themselves they didn't leave him in the Sussex Stakes, as today's Group Two hit-out would have been the perfect way of topping off his preparation for victory in that. Mind you, I'd settle for a Group Two. I've managed to avoid having any runners at Glorious Goodwood this time, to complete the quaddie after having managed to avoid having any runners at the Guineas Meeting, Royal Ascot and the July Meeting. If I can manage to boycott the Ebor Meeting too I suppose that will be a superfecta. (Is that right?). So we've only got Gemma representing us on the Sussex Downs: she's down there for the week. She should look up the theatre listings for the south coast venues to see if Ken Dodd will be appearing anywhere. That would top one of the days off perfectly. If she told Ken she was friends with Jim and Cliff I'm sure he would secure for her the best seats in the house.

Failing that, Gemma might have to wait until Phil Collins plays Beverley House Stables, and if that's the case she will have a very long wait indeed. I heard Alice running through the South African national anthem, so that can stay at the top of the charts for a while yet. (And, of course, if pressed, I might be able to produce one or two of the right notes in an interesting order). Of course, we always have Neil Diamond 1 and Kentucky Wildcat serenading each other, but in the interests of modesty I don't think we want to be intruding too much there. As long as we prevent them from ever meeting each other, that's a romance which is going to run and run.