Dear old Brief

Brief's Windsor win was wonderful. It's not long since I wrote his biography for the horse section and I ended it by saying that he was running well, and that we now needed to get a win. Well, the brave little horse has done it. I also said, keen observers may note, that he races best fresh, so I was consciously taking a bit of a risk in backing him up what by his standards would be relatively quickly, ie ten days after being an unplaced favourite at Newmarket. However, he didn't really have much of a race at Newmarket, as he got rather trapped away on the inside and could never really get going. So, he seemed fresh after the race and this race looked suitable - and so it proved.

The only slight pity, and I did feel a bit bad about this, was that, with the plan to race at Windsor being a relatively recently-hatched one, I already had a prior engagement - our pedigree group, which I could easily have missed, but with James Willoughby being the special guest, I was loath to do so - so I made my excuses for Windsor in advance. Joe and Larry, of course, raised no objections because they aren't the type of people to do so, but I still felt a bit bad - I feel, for many reasons, the trainer should be at the races if at all possible. One is sending the horse out to war on one's behalf, and he needs support. But dear old Brief is such a proficient soldier that he just gets on with the job, and that is exactly what he did - aided and abetted by yet another perfect ride from his regular side-kick. He and Micky get on so well together, and when I put Micky on him I just have complete confidence that the best will be done, by horse and rider.

One nice little aside is that it meant that we watched the race in Leslie Harrison's house, which is very appropriate as he has been basically responsible for every aspect of the life of Brief's sire, the wonderful Slip Anchor. I think that he and Ruth enjoyed watching the horse win, as they rightly are ever so proud of Slip Anchor's superb career, as both racehorse and sire.

So now it's on to Wolverhampton on Thursday. Jolizero seems very well, so let's hope for the best. He was the regular mount of Richard Sims for a few frosty mornings last November during Richard's holiday here. What this means, of course, is that if Joli runs badly, Richard is to blame - but if he runs well, naturally Richard can take none of the credit, because so much water has flowed under the bridge since Richard gave his assistance!