The baby doctor warms the winter

Well, we couldn't put it off any longer: winter's here. But it's not too bad, and the forecast says that it's going to hold itself in abeyance again this week anyway. And the good thing was that we had a winner just before it arrived, so the glow from that has kept us warm. Karma Chameleon was excellent on Thursday at Kempton. He's just so professional, taking every aspect of raceday in his stride. He was well enough drawn, but he got back a bit early on in the race when the leaders set off very fast. However, Seb Sanders' positive riding and the horse's spunkiness ensured that he had got himself back into a good position before halfway. You wouldn't necessarily have picked him as the winner for the first three quarters of the race, but he stayed on really strongly and in the last 300m he was just too strong for them. So that was lovely. When he arrived, Richard Guest told me that he was a grand little horse, very genuine and straightforward, and would continue to progress - and that's exactly what he's done. I've been friendly with Richard for 25 years, since he was a 7lb-claimer with Toby Balding and I was a 7lb-claiming amateur with Andy Turnell. He rode a couple of winners for us on Bold Cardowan late on in his riding career, and all in all he isn't necessarily someone from whose stable I'd like to receive a horse. But this goes back to what I was saying a couple of chapters ago about horses moving from stable to stable, and from jockey to jockey: it's a fact of life and nothing to lose sleep over. Richard, predictably, was as helpful as possible when the horse came, wished me well and told me that he was pleased that the horse was coming here rather than anywhere else. And five minutes after the horse had won he gave me a call to say 'Well done' and to say how pleased he was that that he'd won. That meant a lot to me, and ensured that a happy day really was a happy day - and a happy day for Karma too, as he seems really to enjoy everything. Even though he seems to take his races very well, he's still only young so one can't be too cavalier, but when they cope with things as well as he does and then just come home and relax (pictured) then there's not too much to worry about.

Other than that, the weather has been the big topic (as always!). We've had proper frosts the last few mornings, which have consequently dawned clear and cold. And late, this being the shortest week of the year. However, these bright starts haven't necessarily meant sunny days: on Friday, Saturday and today it had clouded over before midmorning and then we found a load of snow being dumped down on us. This didn't lie, though, even though today, a very cold day, saw the ice on the puddles completely undisturbed through the day in anywhere where the sun didn't shine (ie most places). You'd imagine from this picture of Asterisk and Hannah (and of Alcalde's ears) cantering around Side Hill AW in the middle of the morning on Friday that we'd be covered with snow now, but we aren't. But it's still very cold. Kadouchski and Asterisk galloped in a mini-snow storm on the Al Bahathri at around 11.00 this morning, but earlier it had just been a clear dawn on a very hard frost, as the view from Dr Darcey at the end of Bury Hill earlier in the morning shows. It might look icy (particularly in this last picture of his shadow striding out boldly over the frozen puddles) but conditions were not a problem, again reminding us what a good job the Heathmen do - even if closing on the the AW canters on Warren Hill yesterday so that it could be used as a walking ground (on the basis that the usual walking grounds were frozen solid) could be termed as an over-reaction. But better to take the conditions too seriously than not seriously enough.

Talking point number two, of course, has been the jockeys' disqualifications. I can't really add much to what I said previously, from which you might have deduced that I feel that the sentences are rather harsh. However, the BHA's master stroke has been publishing its reasoning in a 20,000-word document: nobody, of course, other than Howard Wright is going to read all that, so really it ensures that any criticism will be (supposedly) uninformed criticism, and therefore invalid. It's hard enough even to work out what Jimmy Quinn and Kirsty Milczarek were charged with and found guilty of. I believe that Jimmy's crime was passing on "inside information" (but was it information or was it his opinion, which as opinion rather than fact can't be described as information?) without receiving any reward for it, while riding every horse to achieve the best possible finishing position. A six-month disqualification for this seems draconian, particularly set against Simon Callaghan and Holly Hall receiving a 3,000-pound fine and a two-week suspension respectively for ensuring, as trainer and jockey, that one of the horses owned by the villain in question was stopped. Maybe Simon's decision to hand in his license and emigrate persuaded the authorities to err on the side of leniency, but even so that previous (and seemingly very much related) case makes Jimmy's punishment seem very harsh indeed. But, then again, I've got a job so don't have the time to wade through 20,000 words of explanation (plus I've got this blog to write), so what do I know?