So far, so ...

So far, so good? Not really, I'm afraid. Our glut of runners, in which we threatened to run every horse in the stable that is race-fit within a week or so and thus reap a rich harvest, has started with a whimper rather than a roar. At least Jill ran well and collected some prize money, but she was a bit too fresh and did too much in the early stages of the race so that, although she finished fourth, one had to feel that that position wasn't a flattering reflection of her ability. Brief's race at Windsor yesterday was very anti-climactic because he never threatened to fire a shot, and it's just been down hill from there: I declared two horses this morning and both were eliminated! It wasn't a shock that Marvin Gardens didn't get in the seller at Chepstow, but I wasn't expecting to be denied a run with Lady Suffragette: in this morning's Racing Post she was one of only five horses jocked up, and the safety factor was listed as 16. But, disappointingly, the field limit proved to be as low as twelve, and we aren't one of the twelve runners. To rub salt into the wound, the top weight hasn't been declared and so the weights have gone up so, had we been running, we would have been in the handicap. We'd been really looking forward to our overnight trip to Devon, as I know had been my father with whom we'd planned to stay tonight, but c'est la vie: there's no point in worrying about things that are out of one's control. And, to further remind us that one shouldn't be dismayed by minor setbacks, the horse who travelled down to Windsor with Brief yesterday - a lovely three-year-old filly called Hazy Days who had won both her previous starts for Lordship Stud and Sir Mark Prescott - fatally shattered a pastern early in her race. At least Richard Mullen was uninjured in the fall, but it was a salutary reminder that one can't be too down-hearted any time one can say, "At least no lives were lost".

You might wonder why, in Lady Suffragette's intended race tomorrow, there will only be twelve runners when the safety factor was listed as sixteen. This, I'm afraid, is the result of one of the sillier rules introduced by the BHB in recent years. The rule, as of two or three years ago, is that there can be no more runners on a card than there are boxes in the racecourse stables. This came about because of protestations by the NTF which backfired badly - I might have said 'disastrously', but no lives were lost, so that phrase wouldn't be appropriate. There had always been a few occasions when there weren't enough stables, so trainers had to use their initiave. If one was really keen to have one, one would arrive early; if one was in a late race, one would arrive late and hope to get one which had been vacated by an early runner who was already on his way home; if one had a quiet horse, one would arrive not too early and just keep him on the lorry or hold him somewhere. Things functioned adequately, but there were always a few whinges, particularly on very hot days, or very wet ones. And it did sometimes mean that some of the staff had to be with their horses all the time instead of going to the canteen or having a sleep. So, when over the past decade racecourses became more ostentatiously commercial and profitable, and when their spending on things to boost their income - eg corporate hospitality facilities - became more obvious, the NTF asked the BHB to try to steer the racecourses towards directing some of the money that was swilling around towards improving hospitality for the principal performers (by which I mean the horses, not the jockeys, just in case there's any confusion here) by building a few more stables so that every horse would have one. And this request proved to be a bad idea: as has been demonstrated time and again, the BHB are terrified by the Great God the Racecourse Association, so rather than do the terrifying thing of asking the courses to build a few more boxes, they took the easy way of changeing the rules so that even more horses would be eliminated, so that they can say to the NTF, "Look, aren't we great. We've given you what you wanted: now no runner won't have a stable". The stupidity of this rule is staggering, and the glaring lack of logic is mind-blowing, especially when one considers that the BHB - or whatever it now calls itself - also oversees point-to-points, the majority of which have no stables and where every runner has to operate under the conditions in which formerly one or two racehorses had to be prepared for their races. Applying its own logic, the BHB should not allow the majority of point-to-points to take place. And how does it explain away the fact that the Melbourne Cup takes place with no stables on the track for the runners? The British horses in that race seem to cope well enough, so why we couldn't cope here - as we'd been doing forever - God only knows. Which brings us back to Newton Abbot tomorrow: safety factor sixteen, but there are only 80 stables at the course and, because the novice hurdle has been divided, only 12 stables are allocated to the runners in the novice handicap hurdle, hence four horses have eliminated completely needlessly. I'm sorry if I've laboured the point, but one or two of racing's administrators might, I hope, read this blog, and it doesn't do them any harm to be force-fed an occasional helping of common sense.

Anyway, I'm not on the way to Newton Abbot this glorious summer afternoon, so I've watched a few races on the TV instead. These included By Storm's hurdles debut for her new stable. She got round, but inevitably such a small horse found it a bit of a struggle. I've also watched yet another impressive Mark Johnston-trained winner - Gothenburg, not to be confused with the former Mark Johnston-trained Gothenberg, who I think is now at stud abroad somewhere - who won the nursery at Newbury in the style of a horse who will handle the transition into Group company with ease. As, I think, will one of the horses I'd most admired when I was there, Campanologist, whom we saw win his maiden on debut at Sandown last Thursday an hour before Jill ran. He's a lovely horse whom I'd picked out when watching a bunch of them walk around preparing to gallop on the High Moor the previous week, so it was a pleasure to see him make a winning debut only eight days later. It should have been an even more pleasurable experience, but stupidly I didn't avail myself of the 8/1 which was on offer: at the time, I was more pre-occupied with Jill's forthcoming race, and furthermore Campanologist's presence had rather taken me by surprise, because he hadn't been named when I'd seen him the previous week, and I only woke up to which horse this was just before the stalls were loaded. He's now a horse firmly lodged in my mind and affections, and I think we can expect him to play a big part in the successful run which the stable is going to enjoy over the next few weeks and months.

Oh yes, one other thing. In my previous chapter I recommended that you peruse the photo gallery on www.mid-life-crisis-band.com. I hope that you've done so, and have been as discomfitted by the some of the shots therein as you will have been by the photo of McStay (copyright Skillecornphotos.com, so I'm told) in de Niro's which accompanies the previous chapter of this blog. Here's another one of him in his role as jockey's agent but for an altogether less disturbing change, I can now recommend that you take a stroll down the photo gallery on this site, because Emma has put up some rather nice shots taken in recent weeks. I hope you enjoy them.