Sad things, happy things

I am sure that all who, like me, have read the article, typically well written by Tom O'Ryan, about Suzanne France in today's Racing Post will be wishing her well as she struggles to overcome the injuries of the fall which ended her career a year and a half ago. It's just such a sad story, a reminder that this sport contains tragedies as well as triumphs; and a reminder that, however seriously one rates one's own perceived problems, there are always other people with far, far greater troubles. She's evidently a very brave girl who has showed real grit and philosophy in the face of colossal adversity, and let's hope that the fates can deal her a better hand in the future. The article also, incidentally, reinforced in my mind a thought which had been brewing there for a while, which is that, while it appears that the jockeys (ie the Jockeys' Association) feel that the stewards are too heavy-handed in their policing of interference in races, I'd take a very different view: we see examples of interference every day of the week and will continue to do so while the stewards continue to take such a permissive attitude. Of course only a small minority of instances of interference result in a fall, and only a small minority of falls have the catastrophic consequences of Suzanne's accident, but that is still no excuse for the extremely casual attitude which all too many jockeys have towards the safety of their colleagues.

On a happier note, the Racing Post wasn't the only publication to arrive this morning, because Eric the postman brought a copy of the Kingsley Clarion, Mark Johnston's excellent periodical. Mark's views were, as always, very sensible and worth reading, and a feature which I particularly enjoyed was the profile of Paddy Trainor, one of whose many trips to the winner's enclosure this season has been alongside Nahoodh after the Falmouth Stakes. Mark has some excellent staff who are invariably a pleasure to meet at the races and who provide a perfect reminder that, thankfully, in racing the good guys really do outnumber the Miles Rodgerses and Bruce Bennetts, despite the impression that one can sometimes get.

On the subject of racing's good guys, our highlight of the past few days was a visit from Stewart Leadley-Brown. Stewart had been here with his wife Barbara in April, when they came over from America for a family get-together in honour of his mother's 90th birthday. That was, by all accounts, a very happy occasion, but sadly this visit was less good, because it was for his mother's funeral. However, Stewart has been able to reflect that when a loved one is able to exit smiling in her 91st year - she apparently enjoyed a boat trip on the Dart only two days before she died - the funeral really can be seen as a celebration of a life well lived as well as the mourning of a death. Fortunately for us, Stewart was able to fit in a visit to Newmarket to catch up on the team. Stewart and I have sadly had to retire Lady Suffragette (see 'Latest News') whom we raced together, but I am very pleased to say that we will instead be racing Ben Bhraggie together if and when he finally makes his long-awaited debut. Stewart had seen Ben on previous visits but wasn't totally familiar with his lineage, so I unearthed the catalogue from the Goffs Sportsman's Sale of 2005, whence he came. It was only on reviewing this that the penny finally dropped in my mind that Ben has actually 'won' a race already - his dam Kelpie was over three months pregnant with him when she won at Newbury in September 2003 - and the added bonus of the review was a reminder of just what a special mare was his fourth dam Likely Exchange. There are some who put forward the absurd theory that mares who have a long and successful racing career will not prove good broodmares, but Likely Exchange's story would be a major stumbling block for anyone trying to explain this idea: she was a Grade One winner who won 23 races and was placed 28 times (one would probably have to go back to Kincsem to find a top-class mare who finished in the frame so often!) who then went on to breed the Belmont Stakes winner Creme Fraiche who won seven Grade Ones and who achieved the great distinction of being in the money in four runnings of the Jockey Club Gold Cup (which until the advent of the Breeders' Cup Classic was just about America's biggest race), winning it twice and being twice placed. She also bred another Grade One winner(Dream Deal) who in turn bred a triple Grade One winner (Clear Mandate) who in turn bred a Grade One-placed Grade Two winner (Newfoundland). So Ben has plenty to live up to! He is, as the fact that he won a race in utero suggests, his dam's first foal, and a race to watch tonight will be the debut of her second, Hard To Resist, in the 10-furlong maiden at Windsor. Kelpie's third foal, the Fasliyev two-year-old Fazbee, is already a winner, so let's hope that, a year hence, Kelpie will be the dam of three individual winners from her first three foals. Her fourth foal is a Galileo yearling so one is entitled to think that that might be rather good, if unlikely to win in the next twelve months.

Fortunately the night Stewart was here included racing at the July Course, so we headed up there for a very pleasant evening, during the course of which I was able to point out a few faces he hadn't seen for a while. Stewart worked for various trainers in the UK in the '70s, including Les Kennard, John Hill, Richard Head and finally William Hastings-Bass in Marriott Stables in the Hamilton Road, before heading to America in 1979, where he has lived ever since. So it was good to catch glimpses of some identities of the '70s such as David Dineley and Dominic Gibson, as well as to have a chat with Peter Metcalfe, one of Newmarket's more interesting characters and a trainer in Wroughton House Stables in Old Station Road for a time in the early '70s. The one person I wish we'd had the chance to speak to was Stuart Young, whom by chance we saw in Saeed bin Suroor's string on the Heath on Saturday morning. Neither he nor Stewart recognised each other as we watched the Godolphin horses walk past us, but after they'd gone I had a flash of inspiration and hazarded a guess that the two St(u/ew)arts might have worked together for William; this proved to be spot on, as Stewart said that not only did he remember Stuart very well, but that they had been good friends and had travelled to America together, working together for a while there before they had headed in different directions and lost contact. Of course Stewart L-B departed later that day so he didn't have a chance to make contact with his friend, but by a very happy coincidence I bumped into Stuart Young - brother of Paddy Young, whom I best remember for riding Donegal Prince to a short-head second behind Sea Pigeon and Jonjo O'Neill in the 1979 Ebor when, hard though it is to believe, Sea Pigeon carried 10 stone and Donegal Prince, a subsequent winner of the Schweppes Gold Trophy, carried 7 stone 2 lb - in the Clock Tower paper shop the next day and teed up a meeting between the two of them on Stewart's next visit, which will probably be sometime next year.

In the interim, most immediately we have two trips to look forward to this week: Run From Nun is due to run at Brighton on Wednesday and Jill at Sandown the next day. Let's hope that we can have two good runs.