Back to health

I got through our three days of runners. Quite easily, in fact, even though when I last blogged I certainly wasn't relishing the prospect. However, I bounced back to form swiftly and, although I wasn't up to eating when I went to Newbury, I felt 95% back to normality. Well, 70% maybe. (That's a racing thing, expressing things in percentages: 85% fit etc. Nonsense, of course, but it sounds good). We've been having virtually incessant rain, but it was a lovely day at Newbury, which was good; and Ex Con showed some promise, which was even better. The one change to the plan was that Paul Moloney didn't ride him. Dave Roberts, the jockeys' agent, rang me just as I was about to leave for the races and told me that Paul's wife had gone into labour.
I resisted the temptation to ask, "Why are you telling me this? Do I need to know this?", and instead worked out the unspoken and seemingly natural consequence that I'd be looking for a different jockey. So Seamus Durack (pictured on Ex Con pre-race) rode instead which was fine. I did have a chuckle to myself while thinking how an old-time trainer (eg Ryan Price) would have reacted if told that the jockey's wife had gone into labour and if thus left to deduce that the jockey wouldn't be showing up for work that day!
And a further point for conjecture when I related the chain of events to someone that evening was the rhetorical question posed to me, "If this had happened 24 hours later, do you think he'd have given up his ride in the Hennessy?". Hard to answer, that one. I know one thing, though, which is that any jockey booked to ride Punchestowns, whose chasing debut topped the bill at Newbury on Friday, in any forthcoming future steeplechase, is unlikely to relinquish the the mount without a fight: the horse (pictured here leaving the saddling boxes) was imperious and he surely is heading for the top.

When I got home from Newbury I finally worked out why I'd been feeling so lousy earlier in the week: for reasons which I don't really understand but which I think are related to having had shingles as a boy, I get hit by a virus every two or three years, one of whose symptoms is a rash over my ribs, so when I took my shirt off that evening and saw the familiar rash had paid me a visit, I realised that I genuinely had been unwell and not just acting the hypochondriac. But happily I was even farther back to normal by the time I went to Wolverhampton on Saturday afternoon, which was just as well because it was a dreadful evening. Ethics Girl, as usual, did her best to brighten the outing by running another good race (finishing third) but the weather was appalling: 2 degrees and heavy rain which looked about half a degree too warm to be snow. It would actually have been preferable had it been snow, although I suppose the late-night drive home would have been more unenjoyable. But any trip to the races with Ethics Girl is a good one, and this was no exception - even if we did have to give best to our old friend Paul Morris (son of Dave) who currently works for Geoff Oldroyd and who led up the winner.


Leicester on Sunday was also a very cold spot, even if the rain did relent while we were there. Of our three runners last weekend, Kadouchski (pictured) was the only one whose run disappointed me, but it's the law of handicaps that they can't run well every time, and I think that the race turned out to be an inadequate test of stamina for him - which meant that he wasn't competitive. Still, he's come home fine so his day will come again, sooner or (more likely) later.