Here comes the sun

Gosh it's nice to have a sunny morning. We were spoiled in that respect throughout April but the past week or so has been very wet indeed. But this morning was a joy. What helped to make it such, over and above the sunshine, was the professionalism of our string of two-year-olds. In recent weeks we've got into a routine of taking Filemot (Largesse), Anis Etoile (Helissio) and Imperial Decree (Diktat) out together. We went through a phase of taking them over to the other side of town and cantering up Hamilton Hill, which made for a nice relaxing exercise. This week we've altered our route and have been cantering up Long Hill (Anis Etoile and Imperial Decree pictured above, Filemot below), which is a longer stretch of ground and makes for a slightly more strenuous canter. They are all so good. Hugh seems to be enjoying an armchair ride on Anis Etoile, who is really thriving and ever so professional; Martha has Filemot, probably the baby of the bunch, going very nicely; and I'm finding Imperial Decree a very pleasant conveyance. She finds this very easy, so she can start to do something more taxing within a couple of weeks. So this morning, on the perfect May day, was a real joy.

Another horse whom I particularly enjoyed riding today was Milton's Keen, who is a lovely horse. He's really thriving and looks very well at the moment, and seems very content with his routine. I took him out on his own and cantered around Side Hill, and it was just like riding a really good hack through Hyde Park. I've got it into my head that, despite his relatively ordinary form, he's going to prove to be quite a good horse, but so far there hasn't been a huge amount of gallops evidence to support this belief. However, his gallop yesterday under Kirsty was his best so far for the spring, so maybe he's starting to get fit now, so let's hope his current apparent progress is set to continue.

I'm writing this with the laptop on the dining room table so I can watch the racing, and we've just been treated to Sergeant Cecil's exciting win in the Yorkshire Cup. He's such a special horse, and today was yet another magic moment in his splendid career. It was good also to see Geordieland run such a good second, showing that his abortive trip to Melbourne, where he bled in the Cup, hasn't done him any long-term harm. The previous race at York was a great triumph for one of our fellow Exeter Road inmates, Willie Musson. High Treason was second in a handicap at York two days ago, and now he has followed up with a win in one worth £31,000 to the winner, making it a great meeting for himself and his connections. He was ridden by Tom Queally, who is about to start a 20-day ban for riding a Henry Cecil-trained non-trier - and that's a phrase I never expected to use. I saw the race in question, and was astounded to see Tom riding as if his instructions had been "Do not finish in front of your shorter-priced stable-companion". I can only presume that Tom must have misunderstood his instructions.

If Tom finds he has some time on his hands during his spell, he could do worse than read Rachel Pagones' biography of Dubai Millenium. I finished it today. It isn't a great book, but it is a good one, and I'm glad that I've read it. It isn't a particularly thorough profile of the horse, but that's possibly the result of him having spent his life in an environment where the horses are so numerous that they seemingly are numbers rather than individuals, but the second section of the book, which provides an overview of the achievements of some of his sons and daughters, means that by the end one feels that one has read a fairly satisfactory account of the life and times of the horse. And he was certainly a horse worthy of such a book. I treasure the memory of seeing him at Royal Ascot in 2000, when John McNamara and I attended Prince Of Wales's Stakes day. My favourite sentence from the book comes when we've been told of a few Dubai Millenium juveniles winning for Godolphin, and then we're told that Prince Khalid Abdullah's Quickfire won from Sir Michael Stoute's stable: "It was also proof that the stallion's success was not just down to Godolphin, because Quickfire was trained by Sir Michael Stoute and ridden by Kieren Fallon". That's a point well made, just in case anyone was thinking that Dubai Millenium's stock were so marginally talented that no trainer other than Saeed bin Suroor would be up to winning with them. Possibly one reader might have been labouring under that impression.

This coming weekend we have Somewhere Safer to look forward to. She runs in an 1800m Class Two at the Gold Coast, with Daniel Griffin once more aboard. It's a stronger race than the one she won 13 days previously, but I think she has fair prospects of finishing in the money. We'd certainly like to think that now she has found winning form she will continue to progress, so tomorrow we shall learn if that is indeed what is happening. Lady Suffragette will then be the next runner from this stable. She is likely to run at Towcester on Tuesday in a mares' handicap hurdle. Tom Greenway sadly won't be able to ride, because he had a heavy fall a few days ago and apparently has failed the mandatory concussion test. I think William Kennedy (the race is restricted to conditional jockeys) is likely to take his place: I don't know him, but I believe he's a good jockey, so let's hope that we can have another good run from her. I haven't been riding her so much recently, but Aisling has been on board all week and she seems very happy with her condition. The filly certainly still looks and seems extremely well.