Open Day

Yesterday was a lovely day and it's only a pity that its idyllic conditions couldn't have lasted for today too.  Today, of course, saw the resurrection of the formerly-discontinued Newmarket Open Day, which used to be a great event and which I hope is now so again.  I think that we can credit Luca with the idea of the Open Day.  He used to have his extremely popular stable open day in the '80s, and it, I think, spawned the idea of a general stables' Open Day. 

This was always very good and very popular, but sadly (and wrongly and unnecessarily, in my opinion) the introduction of Sunday racing was used as an excuse to discontinue it.  I was rather taken aback today to be told that it was as long as 15 years since its discontinuation - but the nice thing was that the person who told me that was telling me that he'd enjoyed visiting us at the last Open Day and was now pleased to be coming back.  (And when he departed, I said that I hoped that he wouldn't have to wait another 15 years until his next visit).  Anyway, it's good that it's been resurrected, and hats off to those responsible.  I think that Stephen Wallis can claim a decent share of the credit for that, so good on 'im.

Anyway, yesterday was a lovely day, with conditions perfect for an open day (but, of course, no open day to take advantage of them - but at least it was the first raceday of the autumn on the Rowley Mile, and it would have been lovely up there).  Unfortunately, today was less good, but at least it stayed dry until lunchtime, so the 9.00 to 9.30 slot for watching good horses exercising on Warren Hill and the 9.30 to 12.30 slot for visiting the stables both took place in reasonably clement conditions.  It was just that it then rained all afternoon, which was far from ideal for those trying to enjoy themselves at the jamboree up at the Rowley Mile.

So yesterday really was good.  It had rained in the night, but fortunately not for long.  The temperature then dipped significantly to only two or three degrees above freezing as the sky cleared, leaving the recipe for a perfect autumn dawn.  The earth was warm and wet, the air cold but rapidly warming as the sun came up, so we had one of those beautiful starts to the day which massively reduce the bitterness of autumn's pill, with the mist rising in tandem with the sun, and the sky becoming an ever more obvious shade of royal blue as the day got under way.

The first two photographs, taken from Silken Thoughts' back during first lot, and the third photograph, taken of that mare afterwards, sum it up perfectly.  The next two were taken the following lot coming off the Al Bahathri (in just about the same place as the beautiful photograph of Henry Cecil's string in the centre pages of today's Racing Post) with Terri in front on Oscar followed by Hannah on Batgirl (with the tip of an ear of my mount First Pressing just visible in the second shot).  The sunlight and the steam coming off the horses says it all.

Anyway, today's dawn was far less spectacular.  Even so, it was dry and mild.  However, around mid-morning the wind started to get up and the temperature started to drop; and then around 12.30 the rain arrived.  Which was a real shame.  Still, I hope that anyone who has visited HQ today has enjoyed the day.  And if anyone reading this fancies having a closer look at the place, please just get in touch as it's always a pleasure to show this lovely place to any visitors who are interested to see it.  More immediately, though, we'll head to Kempton tomorrow, with Simayill (pictured this morning in the best of the day, just before 7.00) set to run in the last race.  It'll only be her second start for us, but she ran OK first-up under a very big weight in a decent race before understandably getting tired in the final 400m - and, more importantly, she's just a really nice mare, so let's hope for a decent run tomorrow.