Busy week

This has turned out to have been one of the busiest weeks of the year (I hope!).  Well, I've got to say that, to justify the absence of new chapters on my blog.  But busy is good.  Not least when it involves time (I hope) well spent at the sales.  The upshot of this time spent is that I can say that the best-bred horse from this week's Newmarket Sale is coming to this stable.  That's not something which I ever expected to be able to say.  Or if I had expected to say it, I'd have expected to have to qualify it with the proviso "... but of course there's something wrong with him".  But he's in pretty much mint condition, so that's all very, very exciting.  But more of that anon: more immediately we have a runner tomorrow, so we better just take first things first.

I'm glad that I didn't run Kadouchski at Market Rasen on Sunday.  Had I taken him to the races to get his shed plate re-applied there, I'd have found him still lame once it was on - or I might not have done, because the excitement of being at the sports might have masked the extremely slight soreness.  But he was still feeling the foot marginally until probably Wednesday, so running would not have been worthwhile.  We might have had a Joncol on our hands.  I was reminded of the RTE brahma.  I don't know if you saw the RTE series in Paul Nolan's stable, but one of the three horses featured through the season was Joncol (during the season in which he was a novice chaser). 

The culmination came when he went to the Grade One novice chase at Punchestown at the end of the season.  Favourite, A P McCoy booked, great excitement - and when they pulled down the ramp of the truck on arrival, they found that he'd spread his plate and stood on the nail.  They removed the shoe and blood spewed out.  "Oh dear", I thought, "What an anti-climax: all this excitement, and the series ends with a non-runner".  Well, blow me: they iced his foot for a couple of hours, put the shoe back on, and ran him.  Started 9/4, made a few jumping mistakes, finished third. 

We saw A P telling connections after the race that he had been disappointed and that the horse hadn't jumped as well as he'd expected - which left me thinking that if had known what the viewers had known, he wouldn't have been too surprised!  Anyway, had we run Kadouchski, I feel that we'd have had a Joncol on our hands, and that William might have opined that he hadn't jumped with his usual zest.  Anyway, I'm happy that we stayed at home, no harm done, and he's fine now - and even at the start of the week wasn't sore enough not to exercise, which allowed me a great view through his ears on Monday morning of a lovely crystal-clear frosty mornings, before the weather really took a serious turn for the worse and the usual April menu of sunshine and showers (only without the sunshine) settled in.

Anyway, in this very inclement week, we didn't run Kadou on Sunday and we didn't run either Zarosa or Grand Liaison in what used to be the Geoffrey Barling Memorial Fillies' Maiden race at the Craven Meeting (because they were both eliminated).  But, God willing, we shall run Wasabi in the mile three-year-old maiden at Newbury tomorrow.  She is unlikely to cut much ice, because it will be a very hot race (Frankel's full-brother is favourite for the other division, which gives you an idea of the class of horse such a race attracts) and also because she is still a bit of a baby.  But she's ready to make her debut - as she's showing here, doing some stalls practice on the Heath earlier in the week under Iva.  Fingers crossed that she enjoys her debut, and that we do too.