Like a hurricane at the Gold Coast - and Folkestone?

Saturday dawned warm and sunny and, the icing on the cake, with a winner. The second last race from the Gold Coast was the 6.54 am by our time, and it contained the mare whom I co-own, Somewhere Safer, looking to follow up her win in lesser grade over course and distance earlier in the month. Seeing the race obviously wasn't an option, but this time I managed to work out how to get the call on the internet; I usually look at the Queensland TAB website, and for some reason its TAB radio gives off no sound on this computer, but I had the bright idea of logging on to the Victorian TAB site and, lo and behold, we had sound. I didn't realise it until the dying seconds of the race, but Somewhere Safer's form had received a considerable boost earlier in the afternoon with Dalzar, second to her last time, winning a Listed race in town at Eagle Farm - and so easily was Somewhere Safer winning that the commentator had time to slip this into his commentary in the final furlong as she shot clear. Now he tells us! In fact, her form had received a secondary boost the same afternoon with the horse who'd run fourth to them winning earlier in the afternoon at the Gold Coast, so her profile is now getting a rock-solid look to it. I don't know when or where she'll be trying for her fourth win, and third in a row, but we can be assured that Michael will find a suitable opportunity to give her every chance, and that he'll have her in similarly perfect condition. She's doing so well, and it's just such a thrill to be involved with her.

We've now got to try to keep our end up in this hemisphere, and Filemot, Imperial Decree and Polychrome will all be trying to do their bit at Folkestone on Thursday. They all look well and, I hope, reasonably fit, so fingers crossed we'll enjoy the outing. But before then we have a race to watch: Ben Bhraggie's TWO-YEAR-OLD half-sister Fazbee, trained by Paul D'Arcy, makes her debut in the first race at Windsor tonight, which will be worth watching. The capitalization of TWO-YEAR-OLD comes, of course, from the fact that, as Ben is aged four and probably not within six months of his debut, it comes as something of a shock to think that his half-sister can be a precocious juvenile. But there's nowt as strange as horses - and we still don't, of course, know that she IS a precocious juvenile: she might just be a juvenile who is running early in the season. They aren't necessarily the same thing, but Paul is a good trainer so the chances are that, if he's running her this early, she is naturally forward.

It's been fun watching other relatives of our inmates, and Serpentaria, Anis Etoile's half-sister, put up another excellent performance over hurdles at Punchestown on Saturday, finishing a very brave second on her first start in Listed company. She has two wins and a second from three starts over jumps, so obviously that gives us plenty of scope for dreaming long-term. In the short-term, I've had to put Anis' debut back again as she's just got a splint rumbling away currently, but you expect these temporary hold-ups with youngsters, and when you've got a particularly nice youngster the wait is easy to endure. Certainly we're getting plenty of pedigree pointers to her future, as Henry Cecil ran two Helissio three-year-old debutantes on Saturday, and both ran well. One of them (ex Kyle Rhea) we saw as a yearling because I'd marked Helissio down as a good stallion whose stock was likely to be affordable, so we looked at them all: there were three in the October Sale, of which Di Haine bought the colt (who got loose on the Severals last week!) and, of the two fillies, I bought the one which I markedly preferred, and Henry Cecil bought the filly. (I'm sure he'd have bought Anis if he'd wanted to, as it certainly wasn't a case of my outbidding him, but he'd trained the dam of the other one, hence his interest in her). So it was pleasing to see that filly finish third on debut (albeit in a desperately weak 5-runner race at Wolverhampton, in which two of the runners had already demonstrated that they have virtually no ability); and it was also nice to see Henry's other Helissio, who was bred by Rupert Channells' family and who hasn't been through a sale, run a very nice race first time out at Leicester on Saturday, finishing fifth to Tartan Bearer in what looked a very good maiden. I hope having his protege running so well will have livened Rupert up a bit: I happened upon him asleep in his car in Waitrose car park the other day (he'd sent his octogenarian friend John Bell in to the shop to buy the groceries). He'll be even more awake now because the other Warren Place resident which he bred, an Olden Times filly who is leased out to Diamond Racing, ran a good third in a maiden at Lingfield this afternoon.

But stars of the weekend had to be the 11-year-olds Monkerhostin and Royal Auclair who fought out the finish to the Whitbread. The former was topping off a CV which includes running a neck second to Kicking King in the King George, beating Kauto Star and Ashley Brook in the Haldon Gold Cup, winning a Tripleprint Gold Cup, finishing second to Our Vic in one Paddy Power Gold Cup and third to Celestial Gold in another, winning a County Hurdle, and finishing fourth to Kauto Star last season in both the King George and the Gold Cup. That's wonderful - and what a lovely horse in second: Royal Auclair won at the Cheltenham Festival over fences in the Cathcart SIX YEARS ago (when trained by Martin Pipe), was beaten a short-head in the Whitbread four years ago after finishing third in the National Hunt Handicap Chase at that year's Festival, was placed in both the Gold Cup (fourth) and the Grand National (second) three years ago after finishing third in that season's Hennessy - and now he's fought out the finish of the Whitbread with old Monkerhostin. Quinellae don't come any more special than that. The only downer was that lovely old Bewley's Berry pulled up midrace clearly extremely lame, a very sad and worrying post-script to his really brave fifth in the Grand National, but I'm so relieved to hear that he lives to prepare for what, fingers crossed, will be a long and happy retirement. After running over the National fences four times running and finishing in the money on three of them, he's really deserved one.