Character

I enjoyed my trip to Windsor on Monday, notwithstanding that Das Kapital's run was not particularly good.  It wasn't particularly bad either: sixth of sixteen, not beaten too far (seven lengths) in a race in which there were 85 lengths between first and last.  As that latter statistics suggests, the ground was very testing - but the track was basically in very good nick, and the Windsor grounds' staff have done well to get to the end of their season with the track as undamaged as it was, although obviously the fact that they didn't start racing until June gave them a little bit of help.  I'd hoped that Das Kapital would be placed, but he wasn't.

Two of the things which made the trip particularly enjoyable were the traffic (ie how little of it there was - I don't think that I've ever had an M25 trip where the traffic has been so light on both the outward and the homeward journeys) and the fact that I had a chat to Ken Wingrove.  I noticed that a Miss Megan Wingrove was riding in the race, on Laurence Bellman's Smiley Bagel, trained by Mark Loughnane.  I guessed that she might be one of Ken's many children so asked Mark if that were the case, and indeed it is.

What was even better was that one of her siblings - her brother Damien - was there too with Mark, leading the horse up.  I was very pleased to meet Damien and hear of his dad, who made many friends here when he trained in some boxes rented from Mick Ryan in Cadland Stables for a couple of years in the '90s.  The children were only small then - which was just as well as there were quite a lot of them so they needed to be small to be able all the cram into the horsebox when they had a runner, which is what happened.  A lovely family.

I think that Ken had been training somewhere near Coventry before he came to Newmarket, and that he returned to that same area afterwards.  He hasn't been training for quite a few years now, although I did bump into him at the races maybe four or five years ago.  He's one of those people you're always pleased to see and who always gives you such a warm greeting that you remember the instances when you do see him.  Anyway, Damien said that his dad, who is now 82, doesn't get about so well now so doesn't really go anywhere.  I asked him to pass on my best wishes, but he did even better than that: he rang him and put me on, and it was lovely to have a chat to him.  We're always told there aren't the characters around nowadays, but I was lucky enough to speak to one of them on Monday.