Viva le Squeaker

I must apologise for taking a long time between blogging drinks, but this computer was in dry dock for a few days last week, and since its return I haven't been able to bag it until now. The secondary computer doesn't seem able to connect to 'blogger' - I don't know if that is because that computer has only Explorer, and not Safari, as its medium to the net, or whether it is just old and not very good - so I have to have access to this one to blog. Anyway, I have it now, so here goes.

Newmarket, and particularly this small boggy section of it, is much more visitor-friendly in the spring, summer and autumn than in the winter, but even so we have had two welcome visitors from overseas over the past few days. On Saturday we had Cameron Plant, one of our antipodean friends, here as he found himself with 24 spare hours in the UK as he passed through the country on one of his regular business trips to Russia and her neighbouring countries. And then today we had the return of the Squeak (pictured above on the left). This has been as fertile a source of brahmae as if Richard Sims were here, and it has been great to see Squeaker again. Regular readers of the blog will be aware that Squeak worked in this stable for what seemed a few decades - in fact it was only a few years - during his apprenticeship, which yielded a few places but no winners. He is now, though, enjoying phase two of his apprenticeship, which is going extremely well, in Sweden. Merely to provide you with a factual outline of his history, however, greatly underplays the Squeak phenomenon: he is a very memorable, as well as very small, person, who has the rare gift of making all around him smile, scratch their heads in bemusement, howl with laughter, ask him to repeat what he has said, ask him never to repeat what he has said, tear their hair out and wish him well simultaneously. Everyone in Newmarket knows, and will never forget, Squeak so having him, plus his very nice Swedish girlfriend Gaby, in the string for the morning was a very sociable and noisy event. He's back in town for three days, and then is going to his hometown of Purfleet for another three days, and then returns to continue on the winning trail in Stockholm next weekend. At lunchtime today he showed me some DVDs of some of his winners which was impressive as they all showed him performing very competently. Unfortunately for me, he performed equally competently beside the chess board: we used to play often, so a resumption of hostilities today was inevitable. I won the first game, but I'm afraid that things went downhill thereafter, and we called it quits for the day when he was two:one ahead. Just you wait until tomorrow, Squeaker, because then we'll see who is the master . . .

Sadly it was foggy this morning for Gaby's first rides on Newmarket Heath - the fog was rather appropriate for Squeak's return, because it really did mean that most people heard him before they saw him, which is pretty much the norm - but yesterday was a lovely spring-like, warm and sunny day. It contained twin highlights of an excellent schooling session for My Obsession and then a pleasant afternoon at Higham point-to-point course. I had actually entered My Obsession, who hasn't run for, I'd guess, sixteen months, on the flat on Friday, figuring that as he can be quite keen a hit-out over a mile might get the gas out of him before he tackled two miles for the first time on his hurdles debut. However, after yesterday's school, I'll scrap that plan and he can go straight to Folkestone fifteen days hence. He is just such a good jumper (for evidence to back up that statement, please go to Emma's blog and see a great photograph) who is bold but also very sensible: he thinks about what he is doing on the approach to the hurdle, rather than just running at the jump, so William Kennedy, the excellent jockey who rode him yesterday, is confident that settling him sufficiently in the hurdle race will be feasible, and I agree with him. So straight over jumps it will be now. I hope that Polly will also run that week, so that's something to look forward to. We've had creditable performances from our two runs in January (Run From Nun both times, finishing third and fourth) so let's hope that February can keep up the sequence of having our horses finish safely and in the frame.

Our trip to Higham was fun. We saw several friendly faces, and had the happy experience of being invited by Andrew Barr to share in a victory drink with his fellow connections after the (very easy) success of Mr Tee Pee. This took place in balmy weather and ensured that our first impressions of Higham were very favourable. Emma made a picnic, which Gemma Dawson and Simon Waterhouse shared with us, and I can't eat a picnic in a racecourse car park without thinking 'in terms of' the BBC. Just to show that nauseating use of language isn't restricted to the satellite channels, I shall regale you with a question which was asked by one of the BBC's presenters during the Royal Ascot broadcast two or three years ago: just when we were itching to be shown the runners in the parade ring before the next race, we were taken on a trip out to the car park to inspect a picnic, and the presenter's opening conversational gambit to the picnic's hostess was "What can you give us in terms of advice picnicwise?".

Still, hearing such inelegant use of language is considerably less irritating than reading the further installments of the wit and wisdom of Nic Coward, for which 'racing' pays, I would guess, something in the region of a thousand pounds a day. I read in today's Racing Post that he has reiterated his views recently (to an Irish audience) that the rapidly declining levels of prize money in the UK are of no relevance nor concern. I can see why he says this - because solving the problem won't be easy and may well prove beyond his capabilities, so persuading everyone that the problem doesn't exist is the easiest way of making his constituents think that he is doing a good job - but even so I can't believe that he is going to get away with repeatedly telling audiences comprised largely of racehorse owners that large numbers of owners "do not care" about prize-money. As far as I know, Nic Coward does not own any horses - I always rather feel that owning horses should be a prerequisite for holding jobs in racing administration, because it is hard to appreciate the commitment made to the sport by the its principal financiers, ie the owners, unless making the same commitment oneself - so I feel that, when confronted by a racehorse-owning audience, he would do better to ask the audience what they think, rather than tell them what he (incorrectly) believes they think.

That's my political installment for the day. Why do I keep returning to this subject? Because I do feel that a sport as important as racing deserves a leadership capable of fighting its corner; it certainly pays its leadership enough, so I feel that asking for support from that leadership in return isn't unreasonable. Of course racing's civil servants get paid however things turn out, so they are unlikely to appreciate the importance of the sport either thriving or stagnating; and the press will still draw their salaries however things turn out, so most of them aren't going to consider it too pressing an issue. So the only way of doing something to try to help to make sure that Britain doesn't slip even farther down the international league tables of thriving racing nations than it already has is for any concerned voices to be raised via whatever methods there are to hand. In my case, that means this blog.