Wednesday, October 13, 2010

Some sun

After all the rain we've had, it's been great to return to a brief spell of summertime, particularly as it has coincided with Tattersalls' main week of selling yearlings: trudging around a sales complex in the rain is fun for neither man nor beast. Sunday in particular, the day before the sale started, was a joy, as this photograph of a yearling son of Hernando (who has, I believe, been bought from Staffordstown by John Warren for 32,000 gns) being inspected during the afternoon suggests. The temperature on Sunday must have been in the low 20s, which was lovely, and it wouldn't have been much less on Monday either. Sadly I think that this brief Indian summer might be on the way out, but it's been lovely while it's been here.


Mind you, one wouldn't have known on Monday morning that we were set for a such a lovely afternoon because the day started (as, admittedly, a lot of nice days do) shrouded in fog/mist. It was a good start to the day, nevertheless, as we had William here. He's so good to us as we don't have a huge National Hunt string, so we're not able to direct a notable quantity of rides in his direction, but even so he is very diligent at coming regularly to school for us, which is particularly impressive bearing in mind that he lives near Lambourn. And bearing in mind that he's a top-class jockey who ought to have more patrons than he can cope with (which isn't actually the case, but only God knows why). Anyway, Monday's session was very pleasing and a great way to kick-start the working week - a week which, I hope, will culminate in Ex Con running at Cheltenham on Saturday. He was one of the horses whom William jumped on Sunday and he appears still to be in great form, so let's hope that we can get a good run on Saturday in what will, admittedly, be a very competitive race. There have already been some pleasingly good runs this week, including Dave Morris' lightly-raced and weirdly-named four-year-old Chez Vronnie finishing third at 100/1 at Leicester yesterday on only his second run; and also Michelle Payne, who was over here last year and who is pictured alongside Brad Rawiller in Luca's string, winning the Thousand Guineas at Caulfield today on Yosei, on a card which also saw the former Michael Stoute-trained Imposing (racing as Our Imposing, lest anyone think that the late, great Super Impose's late father has returned to the track) make a winning Australian debut. It seems as if it was a wet day at Caulfield today and that there is more rain forecast, which ought to bring the Luca Cumani-trained Manighar right into calculations for the Caulfield Cup on Saturday, particularly as he's drawn barrier one. A win for him would be a lovely result.

2 comments:

Wayward Lad said...

Fantastic photo's and a well written blog, as always.

John Berry said...

Thank you.