Another nice day - helped by Ortensia

I'm pleased to report that we've had another nice day, which is a bonus as again it's looked gloomy enough at York on the TV, even if they didn't cop any more of yesterday's torrential rain.  And thank God that they didn't, because the track, loose though it was, still didn't produce soft ground, and so lovely Ortensia was able to get up from a seemingly hopeless position to land a truly memorable victory.

I really enjoyed watching that - and then I really enjoyed hearing that she is likely to stay on and run in the Haydock Sprint (another big race which could be run on ground very hard to nail down with a conventional going description) so we'll have her gracing our Heath for a while yet.  It makes sense: one doesn't just fly one horse around the world, but waits until there are others with whom to share the plane, and there will be a load of European horses, bound for the  Melbourne Carnival, going into quarantine some time shortly after the Haydock Sprint.

So it seems clear that she'd be as well staying where she is, having another run (in another Group One race in which she'd clearly have a favourite's chance) and then joining them.  It's hard to see that she'd face any tougher a task at Haydock than she did today, although of course there are Kingsgate Native and Hoof It who were both absent today but who could both conceivably provide opposition tougher than the horses she faced today.  But, even so, she'll surely remain the horse whom they all have to beat.

Anyway, we're holding on to nice weather which is lovely, but we might be struggling to do so for much longer.  It's clearly darker in the mornings which is rather depressing.  Happily, though, after an overcast start to the day (even if there was enough sun around for there to be some shadows cast when we were following Luca's string home along the side of the Heath first lot, as you can see in the first picture) we had some lovely very warm sunshine again, which was really nice.  It was even summery enough to make the cool of a canter through the trees (and, yes, this photograph was taken in Newmarket, not Chantilly) a refreshing change - and how often can one say that?