Winners at Aintree, Southwell and elsewhere

We've had a few false starts, but I'm sticking to my claim that spring's arriving. Snow showers on Sunday morning were setback - far more elsewhere than here, as the photograph in the Racing Post of the snow-covered Erridge point-to-point course in Surrey testified - which was a shock in April, and the frosts are still sharp, but fortunately sunny days are here again. So it should warm up soon - and might in a few days get back to being as warm as it was before the most recent reappearance of winter. It was lovely when I was walking through the wood on the top of Warren Hill this morning on Polly, the icing on the cake being provided by a very good sighting of a woodpecker.

I'm sure it was very cold at Aintree, but the temperature in the house was fine as we watched it on the television, and very enjoyable it was too. I was delighted to cheer home Our Vic on the Thursday - not only because he's a horse I've always liked and admired and because I am always pleased to see David Pipe and Timmy Murphy do well, but also because it is nice to be proved right: although I couldn't have said with confidence what would beat him, I just expected Kauto Star not to win this race after his (what looked to my eyes to be an) over-the-top performance at Cheltenham - and I was equally pleased to cheer home Comply Or Die for the same Pipe/Murphy/David Johnson/Old Vic/blinkers team. I'm pleased to say that I did back the National winner, but that wasn't a particularly great achievement because I also had lesser bets on two losers in the same race, Bewleys Berry (well, I had to!) and Simon.

David Pipe obviously has to take the training honours of the past week, but on a lower profile level and closer to home there are a few other names who deserve to be mentioned in dispatches. Team Morris keep firing in the winners at Southwell, Ben having ridden one last week (his record is now three wins, all on very ordinary horses, from eight rides) and the same horse having saluted again under Neil Callan yesterday. Added to which, two other wins yesterday deserve salutations, because two local trainers, Pat Leech and Michael Squance, both trained their first winners. P.Leech is best known as a jump jockey of the '80s (in Ireland, of Ballinacurra Lad fame, not to be confused with P.Leach in England at roughly the same time, of Bootlaces and Baron Blakeney fame) but he is now one of the trainers currently at Meddler Stud. The trainers there tend to be changed often, but at the moment I think it just he and Giles Bravery. Previously he had been riding out for such as the late David Cosgrove and Geoff Huffer, for whom he was a regular morning partner of the grey French-bred Grand National horse Royal Atalza, who is now a point-to-pointer with our feed man Stephen March. I was really pleased to read that Pat has trained a winner, and ditto for Michael Squance (which rhymes with Ponce, and not with Dance - on which subject, how odd was it to hear Luke Harvey keep pronoucing the horse Jonjo Milczarek has just ridden into second place at Towcester, Once, as if Once is Ponce with the P removed? And he even continued to do so after John Hunt had called the horse what I would regard as correctly through the race). Anyone who remembers seeing a nice handicapper by Primo Dominie called Premier Baron racing might have seen Michael, because, having bought the horse out of Neil Graham's stable - I think on the suggestion of Mick Murphy - he looked after him for the rest of his career, most of which was spent in Phil McEntee's stable (during part of which the horse was resident here, because Phil was in the stables currently occupied by Dave Morris in the early days of his training career). Premier Baron was owned by Miss T. J. Fitzgerald, who is Michael's wife/partner (I think they are married, even though her name would suggest otherwise), and their winner yesterday is similarly owned. Michael, who I think is a market-trader by profession, is a really nice guy who treats his horses as if they are kings. He's been blessed with one big advantage in life, which is that he's never been afraid to ask for advice or suggestions, and I'd guess that he'd make a good job of training horses. He has begun training with no publicity whatsoever, but I presume that he is training in Michael Oseman's yard on Hamilton Hill, because last year Michael (O) told me that he'd been approached by Michael (S) about renting some stabling, and asked me if I knew anything about him; to which I was very pleased to provide a very favourable reference, passing on the opinion that he would be a very straightforward, honest man to do business with. And now he's trained a winner - and I think that's a lovely result.

On a much, much sadder note, it was a shock to read yesterday bad news of another ex-Huffer employee, with Mick Miller seemingly in a critical condition in Addenbrookes after suffering first a brain haemorrhage and then septicemia and MRSA. Mick's as nice a man as you'd ever find, and for such a man to be in such a bad way in just his mid 50s is very, very sad. He hasn't looked well for a while, but it was great to see him enjoying life over the last three or four years in his role helping Geoff Huffer: it really rejuvenated him and, whatever Geoff's faults, the loyalty he has shown to his long-time staff (Mick used to be his jockey in the first of his many training incarnations, in I'd guess the late '70s) is tremendously praise-worthy. All we can do now is pray that Mick will live to enjoy Geoff's friendship again.