Eastern sunshine

Summer's doing very nicely now, thank you - or it is on this side of the country, at least.  Yesterday was a lovely day (in East Anglia) and today's been even nicer.  It's good that this evening is particularly lovely as tonight is Newmarket's best-attended raceday of the year (a capacity crowd of 22,000 is packing the July Course, primarily because Jessie J is singing - but also, one might hope, because the card includes a maiden race which, by virtue of having thrown up Frankel, Nathaniel and Colour Vision two years ago, might be viewed as a race to keep an eye on - and I note that Godolphin are trying to make sure that the omens are working in their favour because they have four runners in it - or maybe Sheikh Mohammed just wants to treat his entire family to an hour of listening to Jessie J, and can't get enough tickets any other way).

Anyway, yesterday was a lovely morning here, as you can guess from the first photograph of some of James Fanshawe's second lot on the side of the Heath (with the redoutable Dandino being at the front of it) and also from a snap of some more of his farther down the line, which picture is pleasing because Natalia Gemelova is the first rider in it, and she deserves to be mentioned in dispatches for her winner last week, which I think was her first since she moved down to Newmarket from Malton to work for James at the backend of last year.  It was lovely in the yard (as you can tell from the photograph of Gus and Magic Ice engaging in a bit of debate in the pens about who has the right to first drink from the water-bucket) and it was very nice on the first part of the journey to Chepstow.

But it might have been a different country when we got down to Wales.  We think that we've had indifferent weather here - but they must still be having the really unsettled stuff down there.  The track was called soft but heavy would have been a more accurate description, and even more startling was the jumps track (on which we can see Gus gambolling in the first racecourse picture - the second is of him on the Flat track at the entrance to the back straight, which was just as wet as everywhere else).  When one visits mixed racecourses in the summer, one expects to see (other than on tracks which stage summer jumping, of course) the Flat track nice and green courtesy of its irrigation, but the jumps track somewhere between light brown and yellow.

Well, Chepstow's jumps track is bright green, covered in lush grass and I'd say that the going on it would be good as far as jumps racing is concerned (and I mean proper good, not what is passed of as good during the summer jumping campaign) or soft as far as Flat racing is concerned.  And it was much less warm than here - which was just as well because when I got down there I realised that I hadn't brought a shirt with me, but as it was anorak weather (I did have an anorak, simply because of the 'never leave home without one' school of thought as regards anoraks and trips to the races) I simply put my anorak over my T-shirt and kept it zipped up all evening, which was quite the way to dress for the conditions anyway.

The good thing was that Zarosa ran very well.  She's so tough: three races over a total of six miles in 15 days, and she ran well to be placed in every one of them, and enjoyed doing so.  In fact, it worked out pretty much as I'd suspected: she did everything right, but she did just find the hilly two and a quarter miles on heavy ground too much of a marathon and she was outstayed by a couple of the more seasoned runners.  She looked the possible winner three furlongs from home, but the only other conceivable winner had got her measure by the two-furlong pole; and then she got really tired in the final furlong, and a seven-year-old jumper plodded on and caught her on the line for second.  The winner, incidentally, is another three-year-old, but he's a much more seasoned and mature one than she is, having had loads of racing, including over hurdles.

Just a couple of observations from the night.  I have had a couple of reasons to wonder whether I'm losing my marbles.  The Racing Post 'Travellers' Check' tells us that the Newmarket-trained horses had travelled 162 miles to get to Chepstow, but I'd love to know which route the paper recommends: I've found it to be just about dead on 200 whether one choses to go via London using the M25 and M4 or via Birmingham using the A14, M6, M42 and M5.  Furthermore, I read in today's paper that she pulled too hard, which she didn't: she'd done so at Yarmouth, but she only over-raced for about 100 yards yesterday, because once Jimmy Quinn got her dropped in behind  the leader after half a furlong, she raced the most professionally and smoothly I've ever seen her.

But most of all part of the fall-out from yesterday is that I've realised that I owe the Feilden family and apology: I mentioned a couple of chapters ago that the late Peter Feilden's grandson Ross Birkett had become one of our best amateur riders, but I didn't say that the same applies to Ross' younger sister Shelley: I watched on TV her riding a winner at Beverley for Alastair Lidderdale and was taken aback by how good she is.  She's still not very old and hasn't been doing it that long, so it's remarkable that she's already as polished as she is.  I best not say this too loudly, but she's probably going to end up even better than her mum, a former champion lady Flat amateur, was.  And that's high praise.  (And the picture of Camelot, fresh from his gallop at Leopardstown yesterday and seemingly well on course for the St Leger, in a bucket in the feed room this morning has no connection to any of that.  I just like it).