Unplanned trip

Rather unexpectedly, we'll have a trip to the races tomorrow.  I was thinking that Indira (pictured back in the summer, ridden by Suzy Quirke and leading Start Me Up and Jason Carver down the yard, only a day or two before that horse won the Town Plate) would make her handicap debut this coming Tuesday at Lingfield, but that plan has been changed thanks to an extra fixture being put on at late notice at Wolverhampton tomorrow afternoon.  Such meetings generally attract small fields (and, indeed, the field sizes of the seven races tomorrow are 6, 4, 6, 8, 6, 5, 8) so, although I'd been thinking that as we now had a handicap rating (62) we'd be racing in handicaps, it seemed worth entering her yesterday in a 9.5-furlong fillies' and mares' median auction maiden.  Anyway, there were 10 entries (well, 11, but one wasn't qualified) and some of those quite moderate, so it seemed worthwhile this morning to declare.

So Indira's in a five-horse field tomorrow, in which I would imagine that Rohesia will go off favourite, with our filly and Blue Oyster (also trained in this street) vying for second favouritism.  So we'll hope for the best, and God willing we'll maintain the year's record thus far of having every runner reach the unsaddling enclosure.  The brahma of tomorrow's race is Sir Mark Prescott's runner Rohesia, who will surely go off favourite.  The conditions of the race are for horses the progeny of stallions the median auction value of whose yearlings was below £32,000, which sees Indira fitting in easily with the figure for her sire Sleeping Indian being £8,480.  This £32,000 figure is an unusually high value for such races - and you'd almost suspect that the conditions were written with Sir Mark's filly in mind as she's by High Chaparral - whose yearlings' median auction figure two years ago was £31,500!  Knowing Sir Mark, you wouldn't put it past him.

Fingers crossed the storm should have blown over by tomorrow, by the way.  We had (relatively speaking) very nice morning today (as you can see above, on the Bury Road crossing off the Severals during second lot) but St. Brigid's Storm (as I believe she's called) is in full flight now.  This stormy winter goes on and on and on ...