Dry days!

I don't want to speak too soon, but it appears as if it may have stopped raining for the time being. Yesterday was a lovely day with warm spring-like sunshine and today was similar although less warm (mind you, it did rain during the intervening night) and now the forecast says that high pressure and consequent colder BUT DRY weather is to move in and stay in. That's great news.

If it's a bit colder that's no problem - we just want it not to rain. The last couple of days have indeed been lovely, and today was extra-nice because we had a very productive morning in the stable. William Kennedy was kind enough to call in on his way to Huntingdon and he duly jumped Kadouchski over the line of hurdles (which predictably went very well because Kadouchski is like a metronome when faced with a line of jumps) and then took the horse's younger half-sister up the line a few times.


She's obviously a lot less seasoned, but Douchkette seems to share her brother's aptitude for the task, as these photographs show. And then the icing on the cake came when William kindly lent himself as an extra pair of hands for encouraging Ben around the loose school, the lesson from which session was that Ben can in fact jump, even if he's probably very keen to pretend otherwise!


Later in the morning the two yearling fillies (by Bertolini and Tobougg) had their first canter up Warren Hill, ridden by Adam and Hugh respectively. This went very well. Emma took some photographs of that, but I couldn't do likewise as I was cantering up in front of them on Ex Con.

What I was able to do, though, was take some on the way home, and I hope that these two pictures (left and below) demonstrate what a professional pair of youngsters they are. Horses behaving well and the sun shining: that's a truly mighty double!

To move to wider topics, I really enjoyed Ian Carnaby's reflections on the life of Bill Wightman in the Racing Post yesterday. He did the great man much more justice than my brief musings managed. That's one bouquet I want to give out, and another is to Newmarket Motors, who are just up the Exning Road from us. Emma's car has been playing up and she took it to that garage. Newmarket Motors had it for more than a week (and lent us a car during that period) before admitting defeat and passing it on to a diesel specialist (which was certainly no disgrace because the diesel specialist couldn't solve the problem either). Anyway, Emma was rather dreading the bill because Newmarket Motors had clearly spent a lot of time on the car (not to mention providing a replacement) - but the bill was virtually nothing, because the foreman Gary Smith said that as they hadn't solved the problem he couldn't justify making more than a token charge. Very few garages would have been so kind and fair, and I'd like to acknowledge their decency.

Further bouquets can be handed out following the Derby Awards, not least to Dave Bradley, the very worthy recipient of the 'Stableman of the Year' award. Dave was one of the head lads when I worked for Luca Cumani, and since then he has been the first head lad employed by both Michael Bell and Godolphin. Most recently he has been Jeremy Noseda's right-hand man since Jeremy started training in the UK, and I was delighted to see that Dave's merit and industry had been rewarded. I was also very pleased to see that the admirable Barry Hills, whose professionalism and uncomplainingness in the face of serious ill-health has been inspirational, was given the special award. More puzzling was the award to Christopher Tsui of 'Owner of the Year', for turning down the opportunity to do racing a massive service by keeping Sea The Stars in training in favour of maximising his personal profit (after having turned down the opportunity to do racing the massive service of allowing the horse to win the Triple Crown en route to his Arc victory). I certainly don't blame Mr Tsui because I'm ashamed to admit that I would have probably done the same thing myself - but if I had done so, I'd have done so knowing that I'd done the wrong thing, and done so expecting to be castigated for it, rather than expecting to be given an award for it. It makes you realise just what 'Racing For Change' is up against in trying to make racing more appealing to the public, when someone can be so generally applauded for doing the exact opposite of what we all know would be the best thing to make the sport more popular (ie giving the best horses longer careers).