Saturday, August 02, 2014

Weather or not

Ah well, another near miss.  Indira ran a cracking race at Newmarket last night, finishing second, beaten a neck. She ran well and true, and it was only because she was up against a similarly admirable filly (Statsminister) that she didn't salute the judge.  Martin Lane gave her every chance, but she just couldn't get past Statsminister, who is bred to be a lovely filly (she's by Champs Elysees from a Kris half-sister to lovely old Land 'N' Stars, whom John Egan partnered into fifth place in  Delta Blues' Melbourne Cup) and who looks like living up to her lineage.  I'm sure that Statsminister will end up making Indira's run look even more creditable than it looks now; and that's saying something because even on the day we came home very proud to have run so well, rather than low at having failed so narrowly.

Looking ahead, I hope that we will have a good run from another tough filly on Monda, as I have declared Zarosa to run at Carlisle on Monday night.  It's a tricky one, though: I couldn't completely guarantee that we'll go there, and even if we do go I couldn't completely guarantee that we'll run.  The problem is that I declared on 'good, good to firm in places' and we wouldn't run on that. The forecast was for significant rain today and tonight, and then further showers tomorrow, which suggests that we should be OK.  However, Carlisle shares a clerk of the course with Haydock (Kirkland Tellwright) and this might be a problem.

You might recall that, adopting a different policy to every other clerk in the UK, Kirkland Tellwright has said that his practice at Haydock is to issue a going bulletin reflecting not what the ground is at the time, but what he guesses that the jockeys will say it to be after the first race.  If he has been doing the same at Carlisle, we might be in trouble, as we might get there to find the ground 'good, good to firm in places'.  However, I'm making an educated guess that, after 16mm of watering midweek, after 5mm of rain on Friday and after whatever rain ends up having fallen over the weekend (which the forecast was suggesting might be a large amount) that either he is wrong in his prediction of ground faster than good on the day, or that his practice at Carlisle is not the same as his practice at Haydock.  Whatever, I hope that we get there, find cut in the ground, run ... and run very well.

If we're going up to Carlisle on Monday night, it makes sense to take Gift Of Silence too and run her at Catterick on Tuesday afternoon on the way home.  She has two entries during the week.  Arguably her most potent potential rival might be Incendo in the claimer at Catterick, but there might be a semi-progressive three-year-old trained by Sir Mark in her possible race at Yarmouth on Thursday, so neither race would be an open goal.  And Tuesday's race, which attracted only eight entries, will surely lack depth - so, as I'd be driving past Catterick on Tuesday morning anyway, we might as well run her there.  Anyway, that's the plan as things stand at present.

2 comments:

neil kearns said...

Reckon you'll be OK at Carlisle if the amount of rain that hit us and was heading up the west coast yesterday got there going was distinctly on the east side walking the dogs this morning

neil kearns said...

Predictive text should say easy