On the road again

We haven't had a runner for a couple of weeks (thank God!) but we'll be on the road again this week.  Chelmsford tomorrow evening (Tuesday) and then again on Thursday evening.  It'll be the second last race on each occasion, but that's not too bad as the races aren't late (7.15 and 7.30) and Chelmsford, of course, is only an hour away.  It's a very good thing that the BHA have done, making sure that the winter evening meetings don't end too late.  It makes such a difference.  You can cope with late nights in the summer; but when it's cold and dark, it's hard.  It's hard to stay healthy in the winter when the weather's bad, and cutting too many corners on one's sleep doesn't end well.

Tomorrow's runner will be Konigin.  That'll be a stressful trip.  She's easily our most stressful horse to take to the races.  Sometimes she's co-operative and sometimes she isn't.  Sometimes she'll walk straight on the box, sometimes she'll be very hard to load.  Sometimes she travels well and sometimes she does't; two times she has shifted a shoe on the journey, one time treading on a nail.  She's mostly run well, but she keeps managing to avoid winning.  I suppose she's only run badly twice: at Leicester in the summer when she was just very unwilling which was very disconcerting, and then at Wolverhampton last time when she was boxed in for most of the race.  So that's fine - but even so one steels oneself for disappointment!

God willing, I'll be more sanguine heading to Chelmsford on Thursday with The Rocket Park.  He's fairly straightforward.  And, while you'd hope that she might be capable of winning if she puts her mind to it and all were to fall into place, it's hard to see him winning in novice company with a few younger blue-bloods in opposition  Four Godolphin horses among the entries, two of them previous winners;  a Frankel half-sister to Regal Parade; a Kingman daughter of Fantasia ...  The more hopeful of winning you are, the more stressful the trip, because that's when there's most potential for disappointment.

We have good jockeys on both horses.  Nicola Currie rides Konigin tomorrow.  We're all very familiar with Nicola - particular in this stable, for which she has a very good record - but the jockey on The Rocket Park won't ring any bells with some people: Howard Cheng, formerly a successful jockey in Hong Kong.  He's one of many jockeys to have lost their licenses in Hong Kong.  It's easier for the visiting jockeys who are rubbed out there as they can go home and, when their ban expires, pick up where they had previously left off, as Nash Rawiller has recently done in Australia.  For the local riders who are rubbed out, it's harder.

What Howard has done is come to England, where he's been working for William Haggas for the past couple of years.  It's taken him forever to be licensed here but all the 'I's are now dotted and the 'T's crossed.  The Rocket Park will be his first ride here.  Hopefully the first of many.  It's going to be hard for him to get established here, but he certainly won't fail for lack of skill: if you're good enough to make the grade in Hong Kong, you're good enough to make the grade anywhere.  He's been in here a bit the past couple of weeks as he had holiday which he hadn't taken so had to take a fortnight off from William's stable, so you can see him in the first three photographs (on Saturday, on Hidden Pearl in the first picture and then on The Rocket Park in the next two).