Irreplaceable

Ollie's run on Monday doesn't seem so bad now - not compared with Ex Con's run on Wednesday at Uttoxeter.  I think that the phrase we should use is "never went a yard".  It was his first run for 508 days, but unfortunately it told us nothing about whether he retains some of his ability after all this time and the catalogue of veterinary issues he has had during the period.  It implied that he has retained none of his ability whatsoever, but all his best form is on fast ground, and it certainly wasn't that come 4.55 on Wednesday afternoon.

The ground had been good to firm in the morning, but then there was light rain most of the day leading into extremely heavy rain before his race, as the preceding shot of him in the parade ring implies.  The ground had been changed to 'good, good to soft in places, after the second race, and that was two hours before our race - and then a lot more rain fell in that two hours.  Whether he'll always run that badly (he was never travelling happily and was pulled up, hopelessly tailed off, just after halfway) remains to be seen.  So that wasn't a great day - getting soaked and enduring two drives which were both the best part of an hour longer than they should have been, courtesy of the M1 being shut on the outward journey and there being two crashed on the A50 and one on the M1 on the way home.  But - no harm was done, and that's the main thing.

The irony was that it had been a lovely morning here before we left, as you can see from the photograph in the previous paragraph of Tac De Boistron having his last unrestricted exercise on the Heath prior to going into quarantine before heading to Melbourne.  (If you look very carefully, you'll see Frankel and Bullet Train at the head of Henry Cecil's string in the background).  It was only by luck that I put an anorak and hat into the box before heading off to Uttoxeter - and I was so glad that I did, because I got wet enough even with them on

But, other than that (and we did get some heavy rain here that evening too) we've been lucky, with yesterday morning being a particularly splendid one, even by the standards to which we've become accustomed.  I took no end of beautiful shots yesterday morning, but these two are particularly special.  You might spot in the one in the previous paragraph that that's Ex Con heading off for his canter first lot, which tells you all you need to know about how hard a race I think that he had had the previous day.  (The horses in this paragraph's photograph aren't ours, by the way).

Right, that's the trivial out of the way: now to the life-or-death stuff.  And, flippant though that sounds, I'm afraid that this is life-or-death stuff, because Newmarket has recently lost two of its nicest people.  Firstly, at around 7.00 on Saturday morning I received a text from Michael Tidmarsh in New Zealand to let me know that his ex-father-in-law Tom Townsend had died.  The best way to describe Tom is 'The great Tom Townsend', and that is how he is described in the caption of a lovely montage, given to him by his long-time employer when he left the job, of some of the best horses for whom he had cared when working as Guy Harwood's head lad for many years.  Tom (pictured here a couple of years ago with two of his grandchildren, Liam and Finley Tidmarsh) lived in retirement in Newmarket in Jack Jarvis Close and, sadly he passed away at the end of last week, aged 82.  I can only hope that he died peacefully and quickly, and would like to offer my condolences to his daughters Sarah and Claire, and to his five grand-children.  His wife Sybil died a few years ago - and the one consolation is that Tom, being a devout Catholic, will have died in the belief that he was on the way to be re-united with her.  Wherever he is, he will be at peace, because he was one the greatest and truest Christians, in every sense of the word, whom I have ever met.  People  like him are very, very hard to replace.

If the loss of Tom was very, very sad (which it was) then I'm afraid that I don't have words properly to sum up the tragedy of the death yesterday of Jayne Reid at the age of 27.  Jayne worked for Ed Vaughan for a time, and I think had worked for one of the trainers in Sydney, possibly at Warwick Farm, for a while too; and most recently for James Fanshawe.  She was a breath of fresh air on the Heath in the mornings: her smiling friendliness was totally natural and she was one of those people whom one looked forward to seeing every day.  She'd been in and out of James' string over the past few months and I'd guessed that she might be having health problems, but I'm ashamed to say that the first I knew that she had had terminal cancer was when I learned of her death.  Losing one of life's best people at the age of 82 is a blow to the community, but losing one of the best at the age of 27 is so tragically wrong that one can't sum it up properly.  If any of her nearest and dearest read this, all I can say is that Jayne was loved by all who were lucky enough to meet her and will never be forgotten.  I'll just remember her friendly salutations, her laughter and her smile - and you can see it here after Mosaicist, whom she looked after, had won at Yarmouth last year.  That was a particularly happy day for her - but she was the kind of person who brought joy, smiles and happiness to every day.  That she has gone so many decades too soon is just too sad for words.