Great excitement. We're off to Yarmouth tomorrow for our first turf Flat runner of the year. We went there on Easter Monday last year and Batgirl won with Frankie Dettori, so let's hope that lightning can strike twice. It might, but with Batgirl it's not easy to predict with confidence how things are going to go. Against our chances one might say are the facts that all her three Yarmouth victories have come over seven furlongs while tomorrow's race is a mile (as she is no longer eligible for the 7-furlong race which she won on last year's card, being now rated too high) and that her only other win (at Nottingham) came over six furlongs; and the fact that Easter is a couple of weeks earlier this year, which means that she is a couple of weeks more winterish. Still, I'd thought that I'd done a good job of smartening her up after I'd ridden her this morning - but then, as you can see, she had a really good roll almost as soon as she joined her mates in the paddock, so the cleansing process will have to be repeated tomorrow. So we'll just have to see what happens. Whatever does happen, though, will happen in good local company, with two of her rivals being trained in this part of town (by Dave Morris and Mark Tompkins) and three more of them being in the friendly local stables of Chris Dwyer, James Eustace and Clive Brittain.
No doubt Anthony Berry will want to get some riding tips from our jockey tomorrow. Anthony is really getting some enthusiasm for riding now, which is great as for several years he had none. Today, therefore, was a real red-letter Easter Day for him (and for me) as he enjoyed his first ride on Newmarket Heath. Gift Of Silence was the horse entrusted with the responsibility of bearing him, and a very good job she did of it too. I was on foot alongside them all the time, but the pairing seemed a safe enough one and I didn't have to intervene (other than vocally, because I was making plenty of constructive criticism, which he suffered with good grace) too often. So that was really, really good - as I hope you can see from this photograph, in which I would say that he is displaying a very good seat. I chuckled to myself when calculating that the combined age of horse and rider is 11, which is about as low as one would ever get for horse-and-rider partnerships on the Heath. And, don't worry: in case you think that I'm merely setting out along the road of child slavery, I can assure you that I have no plans to send him either up the chimney or down the drains!
Great excitement. We're off to Yarmouth tomorrow for our first turf Flat runner of the year. We went there on Easter Monday last year and Batgirl won with Frankie Dettori, so let's hope that lightning can strike twice. It might, but with Batgirl it's not easy to predict with confidence how things are going to go. Against our chances one might say are the facts that all her three Yarmouth victories have come over seven furlongs while tomorrow's race is a mile (as she is no longer eligible for the 7-furlong race which she won on last year's card, being now rated too high) and that her only other win (at Nottingham) came over six furlongs; and the fact that Easter is a couple of weeks earlier this year, which means that she is a couple of weeks more winterish. Still, I'd thought that I'd done a good job of smartening her up after I'd ridden her this morning - but then, as you can see, she had a really good roll almost as soon as she joined her mates in the paddock, so the cleansing process will have to be repeated tomorrow. So we'll just have to see what happens. Whatever does happen, though, will happen in good local company, with two of her rivals being trained in this part of town (by Dave Morris and Mark Tompkins) and three more of them being in the friendly local stables of Chris Dwyer, James Eustace and Clive Brittain.
No doubt Anthony Berry will want to get some riding tips from our jockey tomorrow. Anthony is really getting some enthusiasm for riding now, which is great as for several years he had none. Today, therefore, was a real red-letter Easter Day for him (and for me) as he enjoyed his first ride on Newmarket Heath. Gift Of Silence was the horse entrusted with the responsibility of bearing him, and a very good job she did of it too. I was on foot alongside them all the time, but the pairing seemed a safe enough one and I didn't have to intervene (other than vocally, because I was making plenty of constructive criticism, which he suffered with good grace) too often. So that was really, really good - as I hope you can see from this photograph, in which I would say that he is displaying a very good seat. I chuckled to myself when calculating that the combined age of horse and rider is 11, which is about as low as one would ever get for horse-and-rider partnerships on the Heath. And, don't worry: in case you think that I'm merely setting out along the road of child slavery, I can assure you that I have no plans to send him either up the chimney or down the drains!
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