Spring?

We continue to inch closer to spring.  Monday and Tuesday saw some very heavy (and disappointingly cold) showers here, with some of them being hail rather than rain, but at Towcester on Monday evening we had more or less unbroken sunshine.  Which, if it hadn't been so cold, would have been very summery.  Kadouchski did as I had hoped by running well to be placed (well, I'd really been hoping that he could win, but I'd been doing that knowing that a place was a much more realistic aspiration) even if there was an element of surprise in the result in that Martial Law didn't win.

The track had dried out a lot, but it was still quite holding as there's clearly a lot of moisture under the surface; and that probably did for Martial Law, who is probably not as dour a stayer as some of the others and who found two miles round Towcester a much, much greater test of stamina than two miles round Ffos Las.  So we finished third behind the first two favourites, the only element of unpredictability being that it was the second favourite (Santo Thomas) who led home the favourite, rather than vice versa. 

The third picture in this chapter shows the first three favourites taking the second hurdle in their market order, but by the time they got to the finish a circuit or so later, Martial Law's exuberance had taken its toll and Santo Thomas had outstayed him.  And good old Kadou was far from disgraced in grinding his way home into third, seven lengths farther adrift.  Good on 'im.

Anyway, that was Monday, and this is today.  Quite a lot of sunshine as we can see from this photograph of Roger Varian's first lot gallopers making their way off the Long Hill gallop, but still colder than one would like. But at least we're getting towards the weather one might expect at this time of year.  It's drying out and becoming nicer all the time, so fingers crossed we can start to enjoy proper spring conditions very shortly.  And here's today's thought for the day.  You'll have read that Starspangledbanner has come back into training because he hasn't proved very fertile.  Is it just a coincidence that he failed a dope test and was disqualified from a race as a three-year-old for having been given artificial hormones, and now is suffering from fertility problems?