Sunday, December 02, 2012

Sadness in the sunshine

Unbelievably, after our lovely day on Friday and the bitterly cold and clear night which followed it, Saturday morning saw heavy clouds rolling in around dawn and, to general dismay, freezing rain falling by 9.00 am.  It was a truly vile day which featured the seemingly impossible combination of freezing temperatures and rain.  Ughh!!  Still, the clouds had moved on again by this morning so that today we were able to 'enjoy' similar conditions to those in which we basked on Friday, only today it was even colder, as I doubt that it would have got as high as zero at any stage, although obviously the sun melted anything on which it beamed.

Anyway, as you can see, when the sun started to peep over the top of the stable yard at around 8.15 this morning, conditions were truly splendid.  And thus they remained all day, which was lovely, albeit bitterly cold.  Despite the very low temperatures, it was a pleasure to ride out this morning, as you can possibly work out from the shot of Tommy (Platinum Proof) and Iva going around Side Hill AW at around 10.00.

Aside from the lovely weather, one highlight of today was a brief trip up to the National Stud to have a look at two of England's first-season sires of the forthcoming covering season: Nathaniel (pictured) and Harbour Watch.  The former, winner of the 2011 King George VI And Queen Elizabeth Stakes and the 2012 Eclipse Stakes, is off to Newsells Park; while Harbour Watch was an unbeaten top two-year-old of 2011 but wasn't sound enough to run this year and is now about to take up stud duties alongside Makfi at Tweenhills.  Both are very nice horses and it was a pleasure to see them.

The reason why the two stallions were available for inspection at the National Stud today, of course, is that we are midway through the fortnight of Tattersalls' December Sale, so the bloodstock world and his wife are in town at present, hence such promotional opportunities such as today's.  As I've got more than enough to do in the normal course of events, I tend not to get too much involved in the sale and its side-shows (more's the pity) but it was good to enjoy today's little excursion - and, of course, I couldn't head up there on such a glorious day without letting Gus have a little scamper on the Links on the way back into town.

In this chapter, I'm leaving the most serious stuff until last; and tragically this is not good news.  We lost one of racing's nicest and best men, Terry Fahey, on Thursday night, the news of which was a real shock.  The first that I knew that Terry had terminal lung cancer was during last lot yesterday when Larry Wargen stopped me on his way home from work (he still works for Luca, although I suspect that he's past retirement age by now) to ask if I knew that Terry had died.  Terry had been in circulation and at work only until a couple of months ago and apparently had kept his illness to himself.  I was stunned.  Larry told me that Terry was 59, although I read in today's Racing Post that he was 61.  But I'd only guessed that he was late 50s because I knew that he must be: if you'd met him, you could have knocked at least 10 years off that.

Terry was a lovely, kind, friendly, good-humoured man, clearly (as his dying showed) a very brave man, and an outstanding horseman too.  I believe that he was a good apprentice in the early 70s, but I've only known him over the past couple of decades or so as an employee in the stables of Luca Cumani, Michael Stoute, Ed Dunlop and, most recently, James Fanshawe (in whose string he is pictured here in the spring of last year).  As Terry had shown no signs of ageing - physically or mentally - it's so hard to believe that he's gone.  That the local racing community - never mind the one stable - has bidden farewell so prematurely to two such special people as Terry and Jayne Reid in recent weeks is just very, very hard to swallow indeed.


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