All the lovely horses

I see that it's four days since I last posted a chapter on this blog, but it feels like a lot, lot more. We duly headed down to Folkestone on Thursday, which excursion proved, by our standards, to be a very good one, with Filemot finishing second and Polychrome third; and even the unplaced run of Imperial Decree wasn't unsatisfactory, because I think she might possibly just have needed the outing. Although one could almost say that she looked the fittest of the trio, I think that would be deceptive, and fingers crossed she should improve for the outing. Filemot looked easily the least ready, which wasn't surprising as she was the debutante and as such is the least seasoned and mature of them, but happily she confirmed the impression of her home-work that she is very fast, and she gave us the opportunity to continue to hope that we might have an above-average sprinter on our hands. And Polychrome managed to finish third despite running (again) as if she will do better over farther. So, all in all, it was a good day. The funny thing was that I wasn't nervous in advance. If just any one of the three had been running I would have been really nervous, because it is important for the survival of the business that the horses run well, and one might think that three runners would mean three times the anxiety: not so, as I discovered, and I think that it was a case of, while one goes to the races with one horse and is aware that one could come home disappointed, with three I was basically just very confident that at least one of the three would give us cause for optimism and/or satisfaction - and I'm evidently so easily pleased that one ray of hope suffices! It must be very relaxing overseeing large teams of runners, because one will be buffered by the almost-certainty that happy results are going to come along fairly regular just by sheer weight of numbers.

After three runners last week, we are likely have two this week, with Brief Goodbye engaged in the last race at Windsor tomorrow, and then Jill Dawson entered at Lingfield on Friday. With Brief one never really knows what to expect, but I think he should have enough things in his favour tomorrow to run well: certainly he seems well, and the peace dividend of his winless campaign last year is that, at 70, he's rated lower than he's been for a few years. Age doesn't appear in any way to be wearying him, so that fact alone allows us some optimism. Ahead of Jill's resumption, her behaviour at the stalls has been the over-riding factor in my mind. Although, having passed a stalls test (by the skin of her teeth) last autumn, she doesn't need a test before she runs, that fact doesn't guarantee that she will necessarily be more amenable than she was when refusing to be loaded at Newbury last autumn. To put my mind at rest, therefore, I organised a stalls session on the Heath last Friday, which went well. Sort of. Kirsty rode her and Yarmy, Newmarket's famous stalls guru and general brahmameister, led her in. In she went, which was good, but the manner in which she did it was rather disconcerting: she entered the stalls at about the same speed that most horses leave them! From my vantage point (and Kirsty's) it appeared that the front gates took the brunt of her charge, but Yarmy seemed to think that he had done, and duly treated us to an "Oh God, oh God, she's broken my ribs" display. This was rather worrying, especially as he accompanied it with the refrain of "I've got to load the Guineas winner at the weekend, and she's broken my rib". I'd actually liked to have seen Jill go in again after that, but I felt that I might be pushing my luck if I suggested that to Yarmy just at that point, so Kirsty and I just looked at each other quizzically, shrugged our shoulders and decided that we ought to settle for quitting while we were ahead.

So that's Brief and probably Jill to keep us on our toes this week. Furthermore, we have a race to watch at Ararat (in western Victoria) on At The Races early tomorrow morning, when Miss Freelove, an Archway three-year-old half-sister to Spaceage Juliet and Stoneage Romeo (see the horse biographies section of this site) makes her debut. Then on Wednesday Somewhere Safer will be bidding for her hat-trick at the Sunshine Coast in a race whose conditions appear so suitable that one might suspect that Michael might have been allowed to write them himself. So it will be an exciting week.

Which, of course, it would be anyway, with the Guineas meeting and the Kentucky Derby this weekend. We've had Cameron Plant, an Australian friend (and part-owner of Jenny Dawson), staying for a couple of days, and he and I enjoyed a really pleasant afternoon at the Rowley Mile yesterday. We managed to lose a few quid to our favourite bookmaker Gerry Chesneaux (whose horse Whaxaar won at Great Leighs last Wednesday on, by happy coincidence, the same day that Sir Gerry had won at Ascot, which could have made a nice double if one likes to look for coincidence bets) but that didn't diminish the pleasure of the afternoon. I thought it was going to be easy when the first horse I backed (Heaven Sent, who looked far more ready than her seemingly main/only rival Passage Of Time) won easily, but Cameron knew his fate from the outset as he backed last-placed Cosmodrome in that race; well, he had to, didn't he, with that mare being trained by the father of the sheila whom all Aussies have come to idolize after the saturation media coverage of her over the past two Spring Carnivals?

Francesca had actually come on our radar on Thursday morning when Emma had an assignment to take some photographs of Curtain Call for Thoroughbred Owner And Breeder magazine. When one sees Luca's string from a distance, one can't tell who is who because all the riders wear identical kit so, especially if their goggles are down, one only has a few square inches of face to use to tell them apart. Unfortunately Emma didn't capture the incident on film as she was higher up the canter, but Gemma and I, while walking along the side of the Heath and watching Luca's horses set off up Long Hill all-weather, were treated to the sight of a bronching horse throwing his (unidentifiable from that distance) rider off. I remarked that whoever it was had very done well not to let the horse get loose, but that he or she might be wise to ride significantly longer on such a naughty horse: so imagine my amusement when we subsequently discovered that the rider had been Francesca, and that she'd explained to Emma that she actually was riding that horse with considerably longer than her usual length of stirrup because of his naughtiness!

A far less naughty horse whom we were privileged to pat on Friday was the 7-time Group One-winning Kiwi mare Seachange, who is billetted in Geoff Wragg's stable, along with her strapper Jane Ivell, whom Emma and I had met the previous evening with Larry Stratton. Cameron always seems to time his visits so well, because this meant that, with him arriving here on Friday, he got to see not only the 200th 2,000 Guineas on Saturday afternoon, but Seachange on Friday afternoon. And what a lovely mare she is. And how welcoming Jane was when she showed her to us. It would be lovely to see her win here, whether that be in the Golden Jubilee Stakes or at the July Meeting.

And as for that 200th 2,000 Guineas? What can one say other than that surely New Approach was the best horse in the race? I don't know what I can deduce about my paddock-judging skills from the result, because the two horses I thought looked the best were New Approach (second) and Stubbs Art (third at 100/1), but the horse who I thought on looks was least likely to win the race was the winner Henrythenavigator. But surely New Approach would have won if Kevin Manning had rated him a bit early, or even better if he could have tucked him in behind something for a few furlongs so that he didn't have to bear the brunt of the strong headwind for the entire mile? It was a heroic effort by a really lovely horse, especially as, against all odds, he fought back after being headed and, having looked set to be beaten a neck or more, he reduced the margin to a nose, and was in front again just after the post. I don't think one could ever see a horse run more meritoriously in the 2,000 Guineas and not win it, nor run a better Derby trial; but sadly the second part of that observation seems as academic as the first part.

One final observation before I get myself ready for a couple of hours of paying homage to such lovely horses as Natagora, Getaway and Sixties Icon: what on earth is the thinking behind Newmarket having two 7-race cards on which the big race is the third, and the chief supporting race the second? Is it just madness, or is there method in it, that method being that, with more than half the afternoon remaining after the main focus of interest has been and gone, the bars do even more business than they otherwise would have done, more racegoers get even more drunk than they otherwise would have done, and we're all happy as the racecourse's alcohol-selling division laughs all the way to the bank?