Daily grind

I think it's about ten days since I last posted a chapter, ie just before we had our two runners last week.  One of them went satisfactorily; one didn't.  Both trips were fairly straightforward as one would hope from an outing to a local meeting (Chelmsford) but, gee, taking Konigin to the races is stressful!  I remarked to Abbie, who came with me, that we could have the favourite in the Grand National and I'd be less on edge than I am with Konigin.  As it happened, she didn't do anything wrong, other than find disappointingly little when challenged in the last furlong, turning a still-in-with-a-chance-of-winning impression into an out-the-back finish.  Ah well!

The Rocket Park's outing was much less frustrasting.  In advance I expected him to find novice company too tough but to put on a respectable show even so.  That is what he did: he was well beaten, but he ran stoutly to the line to finish fourth.  His jockey Howard Cheng did well.  He had to push the horse for a long way and would have been entitled to be blowing harder than the horse when he came back in, bearing in mind that it was the first race he had ridden in for three years.  As it was, he was hardly out of breath at all.  That's dedication and professionalism, and I hope that now Howard has had the chance to dip his toe into the British race-riding pool, that he will gradually start to get increasing opportunities.

In the week since then I've been busy enough, even though we are having a runner-less week.  This is the first week of Tattersalls' December Sale and I am slightly involved with that.  I've also had a trip to London to a meeting in the BHA HQ for a project I'm involved with (no, I wasn't 'on the mat'!) and I also went down to my late father's house for 24 hours at the weekend to sort out some of his possessions.  And there's been the usual daily grind, more grindish (yes, I know that that isn't a word) than usual as it's been raining so much.  We'll have one or maybe two runners next week, so let's hope that the daily grind can yield a rare reward.

There's been plenty happening.  The Phoenix Thoroughbreds balloon going up has been one of the big things.  I can't say that developments have been entirely surprising, but we'll have to see how things work out.  It's hard to know the exact state of play at present as we surely haven't heard the whole truth.  It's not even certain that we've heard the truth, and it's unlikely that we've heard nothing but the truth.  But, overall, you'd have to feel concerned on behalf of the people who have been doing business with Phoenix, eg trainers or sales companies, or the owners who have gone into partnership with them in horses such as Sands Of Mali or Exceedance.

It's understandable that Sands Of Mali has become a last-minute 'wild card' entry into the December Sale to dissolve the partnership.  If Phoenix's assets were frozen, which has to be a possibility, you would fear that horses in which it has an involvement would be allowed neither to race nor to be sold; and you'd definitely feel that cheques wouldn't be issued from the Phoenix account to pay the bills.  It's not easy to know exactly how things will pan out as it's hard to equate the situation to anything we've had previously.  Let's just hope that it is all the misunderstanding that the Phoenix press release, copied in yesterday's Racing Post, claims it to be.

One thing that has come out of this, for me anyway, is that when I was looking through some of the Phoenix horses, I noticed that, assuming that the Racing Post results database is correct, Walk In The Sun still hasn't been disqualified from the race at Lingfield in February 2018 in which he passed the post first and after which he reportedly tested positive to cocaine.  Obviously Jeremy Noseda having relinquished his license takes away the need to address the thorny problem of how to discipline the trainer, who may well have done nothing wrong; but that's not the be all and end all of the situation, as you'd definitely be thinking if you owned the runner-up.  We've had some long-running stewards' enquiries over the years, but this one must be the longest yet.