A special day

Our thoughts turned heavenwards yesterday when, on a real red-letter Bank Holiday Monday, Brief won at Windsor. Brief's been a grand servant to his connections and this stable. He's now eight-years-young. He won once at three (at Salisbury), twice at four (at Musselburgh and Newbury), once at five (at Sandown) and twice at six (at Windsor and Haydock), providing some magical moments in the process. Three days after his win at Haydock in September 2006, Joe McCarthy - as kind and decent a man as one could ever meet, over and above being as supportive a patron and friend that any trainer could ever have - died suddenly. Following Bold Cardowan and Stormy Crest, Brief was the third lovely horse to carry Joe's colours, and happily Brief still carries them: Joe had raced the horses in partnership with his daughter Larry, and she now races them (Jill, co-owned by Iris' relative Jason and Fiona Hathorn, being the other), in partnership with her mother Iris. For the first time since he was two, Brief endured a winless season last year, so when he came out of winter quarters with a bang yesterday it was his first success since Joe's death. As you can therefore imagine, yesterday's success was a very emotional day as well as a very happy one. All winners are very special but, as yesterday reminded us, some are more special than others.

Obviously, in any win the lion's share of the credit goes to the horse. However, there are always so many human contributors to any victory - and, if we do enjoy a good season this year, it'll be thanks largely to the efforts of Hugh and Martha: they do the bulk of the work here, and are the basis of what I regard as as good a team as we've ever had. So many people pitch in to help, including regular riding contributions from Aisling, Gemma, Jamie, Desna, Suze et al., and I hope that Jamie will have allowed himself a feeling of great satisfaction yesterday evening, because he has ridden Brief, and ridden him extremely well, on the vast majority of the morning exercises which the horse has enjoyed this year. Jamie certainly deserves to feel proud after yesterday's win. And, although the jockey's role in a win is, despite what the press would usually have us believe, generally of minimal significance in the great scheme of things, I was delighted to pat Adrian McCarthy on the back in the winner's enclosure. He's a very pleasant lad whose permanent grin I've had to look at for years - I recall getting a good view of it the evening he rode his first winner, on a filly called Times Of Times at Yarmouth for his then-boss Mick Ryan, because Times Of Times, Statistician, Adrian, Squeak and myself all travelled to and from Yarmouth in the same horsebox that evening - and I'm very pleased that he's developed into a good, helpful and sensible jockey (even if retaining a touch of the larrikin) and that now we've been able to put him on a winner. And the right winner at that, ie one owned by his namesakes, because as Iris confided to him in the parade ring before the race, "Any time I'm at the races and you've got a ride, I always have a bet on you - I tell people you're my nephew"!

And finally one other person who can't go unmentioned in the review of Brief's win is another of the good men whom we have lost recently, Leslie Harrison. Leslie, as many will know, oversaw the entire career of Brief's sire Slip Anchor (who is still alive, but living in retirement at Plantation Stud) - and I mean the ENTIRE career, right from initially going to Germany to select and buy his dam Sayonara on behalf of Lord Howard de Walden. (Joe, incidentally, arrived at Brief Goodbye's name from two of his grandparents, Brief Truce being his dam's sire and Sayonara being his sire's dam). Leslie was another who was with us when Brief had last won but who is no longer around, and I know that he too would have been up there looking down with a smile on his face yesterday.

And for a very special occasion, what better than a lovely early summer's day? Summer seems to have arrived, and today I duly rode out for the first time this year in my shorts, which should at least put an end to the "About time you got the shorts out"s that I've been having to endure on a daily basis. I had my first sighting of three of Mike De Kock's summer visitors this morning, and also caught my first glimpse of Seachange at exercise. Newmarket Heath on summer mornings is a very special place, so let's hope that we have plenty of idyllic days to savour before next winter inevitably comes around all too quickly.