Winter reflections

There's a good article by Turia Tellwright in today's Racing Post, in which she outlines her experiences spending last week working in Nigel Twiston-Davies' stable. She has avoided falling into the commonly-met traps of overplaying either the advantages or the disadvantages of the job, and has instead written a balanced, interesting and informative article. The one slightly misleading impression is that the job comes across as more physically demanding than it is. But, as she is intentionally writing a subjective diary, she was correct to portray it thus: if one does it every day, it becomes easy, but if one comes to it out of the blue - even if fit for other strenuous activities - it is initially very taxing. What was unarguably tough, though, was the fact that, by chance, her week included what I hope will prove to be the most unpleasant day of the year: last Thursday, which was cold, very wet and very, very windy. For those farther north than here, much of the rain was snow. It was horrible here, and by the sound of it was even more horrible in the Cotswolds. The rain wasn't really hard here until the second half of the morning, so only poor Hugh copped a real drenching, when out on his own on Jill for the last lot. The wind, however, was extremely strong all day, and thus the day exposed the flaw in the theory that one sometimes hears, that of it being too windy to rain. (The mere fact that there is a phrase 'driving rain' suggests that that idea doesn't necessarily hold water).

Otherwise, we've had some rather nice days, if one ignores the wind (which admittedly isn't easy). Hand in hand with these nice days have come some nice rides: now that we are into the second month of the year, the horses' work in general is being upped, so they are taking it a bit more seriously, rather than just larking around and trying to throw their riders off. We had four unseated riders in January; fingers crossed that will prove to be our most dramatic month of the year. Certainly if the horses keep giving us as nice rides as we've enjoyed recently we'll be happy. Imperial Decree (pictured here with Struck Lucky), who could always be a bit skittish last year, has been the real star turn: she seems to have matured a lot both physically and mentally over the winter, and is now a real pleasure to ride. I was lucky enough to find this when we took the traditional first of February canter up the freshly-opened grass on Warren Hill, as I kept Hugh on the (impressively well-behaved) Key Of Luck filly company on what turned out to be a satisfactorily straightforward exercise. It is always nice when a youngster canters out on the open Heath for the first time, as opposed to going up the all-weather, so that was good, and a tribute to how well Hugh and Martha have educated the little filly. If Imperial Decree hasn't been exercising with the two-year-old, she's been going out with Anis Etoile, and she too is going about her work in a very pleasing manner. The same comment applies to the older pair, Jill and Brief, who both feel a million dollars just now. Jill feels really strong and supple, and Brief just gets better and better as he gets older: his rider (very often Jamie Trotter currently) has to sit tight at times - but then he wouldn't be Brief if he turned down every excuse to spook - but otherwise he is just a delight. My Obsession is continuing to progress satisfactorily towards his intended resumption eight days hence, and the other horses in the stable seem to be coming along well enough too. But, of course, it's early days yet, and there remains plenty of scope for things to go wrong as the year progresses.

Now, to go from the sublime to the ridiculous, I think I can shed a bit more light on exactly what Squeaker has been up to in Sweden. For this insight, I am indebted to 'The Week', to which Emma subscribes. According to this magazine, 'Criminal gangs in Sweden are believed to be stealing from travellers on long-distance coaches by hiding dwarfs, or possibly small children, in sports bags. Once inside the luggage compartment, the dwarfs emerge and rummage through other suitcases looking for cash and jewellery. They then zip themselves back in their own bags to await collection at the end of the trip. "We are looking at our records to identify criminals of limited stature", said a police spokesman'. Unfortunately we didn't spot this article until the weekend, by which time Squeak has already headed back to his adopted country, so we weren't able to quiz him about whether he is indeed involved in this scam. But I will - and I am sure I will then be greeted with the response, "Very fonny!".

To touch upon racing in general before I sign off, I'm pleased to see that the Nic Coward/Alastair Down debate is provoking a more general awareness of the debt which all involved with racing - and dependent industries - owe to the country's owners. Too often we have heard refutations of the fact that it is owners who subsidize the sport for everyone else - allowing everyone else to enjoy the show at far less than cost of production, and for the industries which feed off it to enrich their participants - so it has been very pleasing to see the likes of Bill Oppenheim join me in pointing out what should be the obvious. In other aspects of racing - ie the important ones, those which revolve around the horses rather than the politics - all roads lead to Cheltenham. I've marked down Blue Bajan, Numide (those first two are likely to be aimed at the same race) Sentry Duty (who I presume would go for the Sun Alliance Hurdle) and Thyne Again as horses to pay particular attention to if they show up there, and of course Carruthers will be the horse everyone is willing home. And, even though I have both Kauto Star and Denman in my Twelve To Follow, I really hope that Kicking King can stay injury-free and build on the immense promise of his resumption. He would add a huge amount of extra interest to the Gold Cup if he lines up in it.

Closer to home, we've seen three of our former inmates in action over the past week. Critical Stage ran yet another fine race for Jimmy Frost, who has done so well with him, when second in a claimer at Kempton, and it was good to see that Archirondel, who ran in a seller at Wolverhampton, is still on the go aged ten. Less motivated was Mattie Stokes, who ran woefully in the bumper at Towcester. He's now trained by Mark Wilkinson, who has resumed training near where Mattie's connections live. One's got to hope that the heavy ground was to blame - otherwise a race at Higham which took my fancy, a (divided) point-to-point for maidens EIGHT-YEARS-OLD AND UPWARDS, might be on his agenda - but he really didn't look enthusiastic as he eased himself back to a trot and then a walk inside the final two furlongs, despite his rider's urgeings. He always was a 'character', but it'll be a worry if he becomes more characterful rather than less so.