Busy week under way

I can't say that our busy period of a few runners has started particularly well with Ollie (Orla's Rainbow) having finished, I think, 7th of 9 at Yarmouth today, but I'm not too dispirited.  At this early stage of his career, it's speculation as to what conditions will suit him best, but for various reasons I've formed a hunch that he'll like fast ground.  He's by a son of Danehill (Oratorio) but he looks very Danehill-ish and conceivably be a son of Danehill - and they were always meant to like fast ground.  So, yesterday evening with the ground at Yarmouth being good to firm, it looked as if we might for the first time get what might be his preferred ground.  However, clouds were brewing over the stable as the sun started to go down at the end of a rare perfect summer week (as you can see) so that was a slight worry.

It was raining hard at bedtime so my thought was that I hoped that they weren't getting the rain at Yarmouth, approximately 70 miles away to the north-east on the coast.  However, I wasn't too concerned as usually if we get a lot of rain here, we find, for whatever reason, that it's largely missed Yarmouth.  And as this morning dawned bright and sunny (pictured) and it seemed that we'd only had probably two or three millimetres overnight, there were surely no worries.  And then I found out that Yarmouth had had 9mm, and the ground had changed to good, good to soft in places.

There were consequently a stack of non-runners at Yarmouth, but we've had quite enough of those recently so I wasn't tempted to join them - plus Ollie still needs the practice and, on lovely safe ground, there was nothing to be lost by seeing how he went.  When we got to the races, it became very clear that it really was lovely safe ground.  Gus and I were both very happy with it, and I remarked to a few people that, even if conditions were on the soft side of good and would not suit fast-ground horses, the ground was so nice that, were we to wake up one morning and find the Heath in such a condition, we'd gallop everything on the grass to make the most of it.

Anyway, Ollie didn't run particularly well, but he didn't run appallingly either.  Darryll Holland didn't particularly blame the ground for the horse's inability to feature among the principals, merely remarking that he's a nice, very genuine young horse who's still only a baby, and surely has a nice future ahead of him, and so can be excused for finding things still a bit tough.  So that was fine - as was the fact that we more or less missed all the rain.  There was a squall as we were in the parade ring, but that was that until it was time to go home, when we got on the road only seconds before torrential rain hit the course.

So that was a fairly straightforward day.  Tomorrow we're off to Goodwood which is a treat as it's arguably the world's most special racecourse and this is arguably the best meeting of the entire British racing calendar, so let's hope that it doesn't rain too much and lessen its glory (which it might well do).  The July Meeting here was hugely diminished by very grotty weather, but Glorious Goodwood is perhaps even more dependent on good weather, so let's hope that they/we get it.  But far more important is the fact that Panto is still alive.  He'd still be no better (and possibly considerably worse) than even money to pull through, but he's holding his own, and while there's life, there's hope.  I pray that he makes it.