Thursday, March 19, 2020

Parish notices

We're two days into our racing-less month-and-a-half.  Life isn't really any different here, on the surface anyway.  The training is continuing as normal on the Heath.  For this stable, it's an easy decision to continue as we are, but I can see that it isn't so straightforward for others.  We have very few runners in the winter, so the majority of horses in the stable at present are getting ready to resume racing after a break, or getting ready to make a debut.  So in general they are all currently getting fit with an aim of starting racing around the middle of April, or later.  And now they are going to have to start racing in May, which isn't really much of a difference.

I had entered four horses for races between now and the end of April, races which obviously won't now take place.  These were:- Kryptos, Doncaster 28th March; Hidden Pearl, Lingfield 31st March and Bath 9th April; Free Bird, Fakenham 13th April;  and Roy, Brighton 18th April and Brighton 28th April.  All bar Hidden Pearl would be resuming or, in Free Bird's case, making a debut.  Their resumptions/debut will be deferred a bit, which isn't the end of the world. Hidden Pearl has been running on the AW over the winter, but she isn't coming to the end of her campaign.  In fact, she's (I hope) only just now coming to herself and has the season ahead of her.  If she has to go a few more weeks between races than I'd planned, that's not the end of the world either.

They won't need to do much galloping in the next three weeks or so as they're a bit farther off their next run than I had anticipated, but they can stay in the same routine, with plenty of cantering.  They'll need to do so if they are going to be ready to run in May.  And then we have some others - e.g. Sacred Sprite, The Simple Truth - who would be getting ready to run sometime in maybe the second half of April and for whom I had not yet picked out races.  Whether or not they would have been ready to resume in the second half of April or the first half of May is now academic: it'll just have to be the first half of May, so nothing is different at all for them. And then for the horses farther off running than that, obviously nothing is changing.

Things will, of course, be more problematic if it turns out that we don't resume racing in May, but we'll cross that bridge if we get to it.  Obviously, as things stand, racing has only been called off until the end of April, so it would be premature currently to be working on the assumption that the disruption was going to be longer than that.  We'll see.  What is encouraging is that I read yesterday that France-Galop is hopeful of racing resuming in France in the middle of April.  But, again, we'll just have to see what happens.  It's life in general, really: you deal with today's situations today, and as for the future you deal with each situation in the future when it presents itself.

On a different note, I was delighted to see Newmarket's newest trainer Joseph Parr get off the mark shortly before this hiatus interrupted the racing programme.  Joe, a very diligent and experienced horseman and a thoroughly pleasant person, has only been training a few weeks, having taken over from his now-retired maternal grandfather Alan Bailey, and every runner I have seen him have has run well.  He's started very well, as you would expect because he should be a very good trainer, whether you believe in nature or nurture.  Alan is, of course, a training legend as well as being one of the nicest people you could ever meet, and Joe has Alan's genes and Alan's tuition as well, so he ticks both boxes.  He's worked for his grandfather for years, with a period gaining experience elsewhere (working for Ed Dunlop) in the middle of it.

Most recently, Alan was training in Cavendish Stables, the little property which was created in the corner of Green Ridge Stables and into which Alan moved when he came back to town a decade or more ago.  He had previously trained in, if my memory serves me, Induna Stables in the Fordham Road before moving away to Cheshire, where I'm guessing he must have been in Colin Crossley's old yard.  I guess Chris Wall must have moved into Induna (from Wroughton House) when Alan moved out as Chris has been there for years now.  Joe, though, is not training in Cavendish Stables, which has been sold and is now part of James Tate's complex.  He's still in Hamilton Road, I think up around the corner, I'm guessing in Frankland Lodge although I could be wrong about that.

Joe's also bred for the job on the other side of his pedigree.  You'll probably remember his father Stewart who was a very good apprentice with Harry Wragg and I think rode as a jockey for a while after his apprenticeship was over.  Stewart no longer works in racing (I think that he's involved in land management over on the other side of the country) but he was a popular and respected figure in the town for many years.  He was Julie Cecil's travelling head lad when she trained in Southgate Stables where Amy Murphy now trains, and then he went up to Nottinghamshire when Jeremy Glover retired, to train from his yard.

I remember one rather bizarre incident when we had a horse who otherwise achieved nothing (Desiree) but nearly won at Beverley one day.  She was arguably unlucky as she was boxed in and flew home after getting out too late, only to fail narrowly in a photo-finish, finishing second.  She was 50/1 that day - and the horse who beat her was also a 50/1 shot, trained by Stewart.  Anyway, that's definitely a name to look out for: Joseph Parr.  We won't be seeing him in the winner's enclosure again this month or next, but let's hope that he's back there in May.  I'm hoping that I'll be there too!

2 comments:

glenn.pennington said...

Here's hoping for a decent modicum of success in 2020 John.



John Berry said...

Thank you, Glenn. Much appreciated. Let's hope that it's a year that can bring some good news for everyone, even though it has started so badly.