I enjoyed the trip to Salisbury yesterday, as did Gus. I'd imagine that Ethics Girl enjoyed it too as she seems thoroughly content at the races. She ran well although her fifth position was ultimately a slight let-down as she looked as if she could win with just over a furlong to go. The highlight of the trip for me was bumping into Veronica Kirby and her daughter Caroline, widow and daughter of my late friend and mentor John Kirby. The last horse whom John broke in, Bill and Shirley Robbins' Billy Buttons, was a disappointing unplaced favourite in Ethics' race,
weakening badly in the closing stages. However, he's only a youngster still so I believe and hope that he will win in due course; and when he does, it will be yet another occasion to cast one's mind back to John's patient and kind horsemanship. If that was my highlight of the day, the general consensus would be that the day was most memorable for the first major breach of the new whip rules, which only had only come in at the start of the day's play. Predictably, one apprentice rode as if he was unaware that the rules had changed, although as he would probably have copped a ban even under the old system it would be hard to say that it was ignorance of the change that caused his transgression. Still, that's day one of the new system out of the way, so the acclimatization process can now move on to day two.
Day two, as you can see here, began memorably, with such a glow in the eastern sky that my view of it from Alcalde's back might have led one to believe that the wood at the top of Bury Hill was on fire. Having begun thus, day two will next see me head off to Huntingdon for Kadouchski's first steeplechase. I suppose that I'm looking forward to it, although really I'm looking forward to it having taken place, assuming that he comes home safely. He ought to do so as he has been very well prepared, but one can't take anything for granted. I hope that he can
be inspired by the achievement last weekend by one of his former riders, Clare Lindop (pictured on him at Kempton in June) who on Saturday at Morphettville rode the 999th and the 1,000th winners of her very successful career. It's great that ATR now show a feed from Australia which features the main meeting from all the mainland states (plus some racing from New Zealand) rather than just two meetings because it means that on a Saturday we'll see the racing in Adelaide too, rather than , generally, just what's happening in Melbourne and Sydney. That meant that we were able to watch her reaching her milestone, which was great; and also to see her interview, which made a refreshing contrast to the standard Racing UK interview, which in general is characterised by the fact that the words in the questions easily outnumber the words in the answer. This certainly wasn't the case with Clare: David Bridgeland only had to ask his first (one-sentence) question and that was the only contribution he was required to make to the dialogue!
I enjoyed the trip to Salisbury yesterday, as did Gus. I'd imagine that Ethics Girl enjoyed it too as she seems thoroughly content at the races. She ran well although her fifth position was ultimately a slight let-down as she looked as if she could win with just over a furlong to go. The highlight of the trip for me was bumping into Veronica Kirby and her daughter Caroline, widow and daughter of my late friend and mentor John Kirby. The last horse whom John broke in, Bill and Shirley Robbins' Billy Buttons, was a disappointing unplaced favourite in Ethics' race, 
weakening badly in the closing stages. However, he's only a youngster still so I believe and hope that he will win in due course; and when he does, it will be yet another occasion to cast one's mind back to John's patient and kind horsemanship. If that was my highlight of the day, the general consensus would be that the day was most memorable for the first major breach of the new whip rules, which only had only come in at the start of the day's play. Predictably, one apprentice rode as if he was unaware that the rules had changed, although as he would probably have copped a ban even under the old system it would be hard to say that it was ignorance of the change that caused his transgression. Still, that's day one of the new system out of the way, so the acclimatization process can now move on to day two.
Day two, as you can see here, began memorably, with such a glow in the eastern sky that my view of it from Alcalde's back might have led one to believe that the wood at the top of Bury Hill was on fire. Having begun thus, day two will next see me head off to Huntingdon for Kadouchski's first steeplechase. I suppose that I'm looking forward to it, although really I'm looking forward to it having taken place, assuming that he comes home safely. He ought to do so as he has been very well prepared, but one can't take anything for granted. I hope that he can 
be inspired by the achievement last weekend by one of his former riders, Clare Lindop (pictured on him at Kempton in June) who on Saturday at Morphettville rode the 999th and the 1,000th winners of her very successful career. It's great that ATR now show a feed from Australia which features the main meeting from all the mainland states (plus some racing from New Zealand) rather than just two meetings because it means that on a Saturday we'll see the racing in Adelaide too, rather than , generally, just what's happening in Melbourne and Sydney. That meant that we were able to watch her reaching her milestone, which was great; and also to see her interview, which made a refreshing contrast to the standard Racing UK interview, which in general is characterised by the fact that the words in the questions easily outnumber the words in the answer. This certainly wasn't the case with Clare: David Bridgeland only had to ask his first (one-sentence) question and that was the only contribution he was required to make to the dialogue!
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