Wednesday, July 08, 2020

We'll bounce back

Saturday provided a good reminder of why I enjoyed lockdown (the proper bit of it, when there was no racing) so much!  During lockdown, we went back in time to the halcyon days when you had a period each year with no racing (unless you were participating in both Flat and National Hunt) and it was rather nice to have a let-up when, although you were still working hard, you didn't have the stress of runners.  There was a good piece in the Racing Post on Christopher Wright the other day and his highlighted observation was spot-on.  It was something like, "Racing is 90% disappointment, 9% excitement and 1% pure elation"!

Not having runners means, of course, that you miss out on the 1%, but it also means that you miss out on the bulk of the 90%.  And, as I was reminded on Saturday, that 90% is something which is good to miss.  Gee, it was a disappointing day on Saturday.  I'd actually started the month thinking that I'd be disappointed if either of our two early runners (Hidden Pearl at Catterick on 2nd July, Kryptos at Haydock on 4th July) were beaten.  (And that's a very different thing from expecting them both to win.  I expected to be disappointed - I always do - and would actually have been stunned had both won.  But anticipating disappointment doesn't stop you being disappointed when the expected happens, if that makes sense).

As it turned out, I couldn't be too disappointed with Hidden Pearl, notwithstanding that she didn't win.  She was beaten a short head, making all in a two-mile race until headed in the final two strides.  It was disappointing and it was frustrating, but at the same time it was very good to see her run so well. And there were no 'What if ...'s: she was perfectly ridden and was just beaten by a slightly better horse on the day.  People often say one is unlucky when narrowly beaten, but there was no bad luck involved.  Everything went right and she was narrowly beaten.  I actually think that it was as much the rain which beat her as anything else.  The winner has good soft-ground National Hunt form and was probably helped by the rain; one certainly can't say that she didn't handle the soft ground, but I don't think that it helped her.

So that was fine (if disappointing!).  Saturday's trip to Haydock wasn't fine, though.  It was anything but fine, although obviously it could have been a lot worse.  Kryptos did something which he'd never done previously: he ran badly.  Thank God he is unharmed by the experience, but it was a reasonably bitter pill to swallow even so.  I don't think that his poor performance stemmed from anything more sinister than what 'Damiano' describes apositely in the comments beneath the previous chapter as 'Haydock's horrible "soupy" ground' which we repeatedly see to be a law unto itself (even with horses such as Kryptos who act well on soft ground) and/or the kind of disappointment which one often gets second up after a long spell.  Even so, as I say, it did remind me of how pleasantly simple life had been during lockdown.  No matter - he'll bounce back.  And so will I!