Saturday, December 29, 2012

Wet end

I don't often write two chapters on this blog in one day, but I'm doing so today.  Conscious of the fact that I hadn't mentioned our runner today, I knocked a quick entry off at 6.15 this morning before heading out into the dark, saying that we'd be running Magic Ice at Wolverhampton today and Simayill at Lingfield tomorrow.  Within half an hour that announcement had been overtaken by events: dark though it was when I pulled Simayill out of her box this morning, I could still see enough to realise that I was unlikely to be happy with her when I got on her back.  True enough, she didn't feel herself - nothing major, but there's no point in running a horse who isn't 100%, and she didn't feel 100% today.  This meant that Magic Ice would be our last runner of the year.

When a horse goes off at odds-on, finishing second isn't great.  That aside, though, she did everything right bar win.  She was probably an unrealistic favourite, bearing in mind that on Topspeed ratings she had 6lb to find with the horse who beat her in this 3-horse race.  One was entitled to think that she'd come on for her debut 14 days ago, and she clearly had done because she was only half a length behind the horse who theoretically had 6lb in hand (and Topspeed is probably a much better guide than Postmark in these races for lightly-raced two-year-olds, particularly when the form is on the AW and the speed figures have an element of uniformity to them, ie when one isn't worrying about whether today's underfoot conditions will see the horse posting his or her optimum performance).

Anyway, our year has now thus ended with a whimper (ie a beaten odds-on shot) not with a roar, but aside from the fact that the filly didn't win, she did nothing wrong - and it was probably unrealistic to think that we'd see a massive improvement in only 14 days.  She'll be right.  So that's been the day - driving through heavy rain to squelch through the wet of Wolverhampton (as shown in the first paragraph) and now, prior to having some dinner while watching the second half of the second and final episode of the excellent dramatization of 'Restless' (ie the bit we couldn't stay awake to watch last night), I'm just putting up my second posting of the day.  I'd say that I'm putting it up in peace - except for the fact that, in the words of Rockwell's song, with these cats about I always feel like somebody's watching me .

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi John,
Interesting after reading your blog earlier this morning, and becoming aware of your 'uncertainty' regarding running Simayill, that she started shortening (according to oddschecker) during the morning.
Clearly your blog has not been picked up by the odds compilers and traders of the evil enemy.
By the way, you any thoughts on the new C4 line up and omissions?
Mick
Happy New Year!

Anonymous said...

Hi John,
Interesting after reading your blog earlier this morning, and becoming aware of your 'uncertainty' regarding running Simayill, that she started shortening (according to oddschecker) during the morning.
Clearly your blog has not been picked up by the odds compilers and traders of the evil enemy.
By the way, you any thoughts on the new C4 line up and omissions?
Mick
Happy New Year!

John Berry said...

Thanks Mike. Can't say that I have particularly strong views on the C4 changes, other than having been extremely surprised that Mike Cattermole wasn't wanted on the new team and mildly surprised that Tommo wasn't wanted. I've watched some of today's first show and I'm assuming that they'll get better: they might as well not have bothered showing Musselburgh for how little interest they had in it. Still, they'll probably find it less difficult to focus on the day's sport when they are covering a more major meeting.