Racing round-up (ours, not in general)

Apologies.  I seem only to be writing a chapter on this blog when we have a runner coming up.  And that's only about once a week.  You'll have guessed from that that, yes, we do have a runner coming up: Das Kapital (pictured here with Jana on Friday) at Windsor tomorrow.  It's an amateurs' race so Ross Birkett will be on him again, the pair aiming to run about half an inch better than at Haydock.  If they can, it'll be a clear-cut victory - the judge would hardly need to look at the photograph!  It'll be the first time that I've run him on a right-handed track.  I've kept him to left-handed tracks in the past because he can lean left (often quite markedly) when he's under pressure.

However, in fact he's perfectly happy galloping round right-handed bends (which he does quite often around Bury Hill) and only lugs left in the closing stages up the straight when he's getting tired.  So I don't anticipate him having any trouble at all with the bend and, while I would probably baulk at running him at Windsor on fast ground when staying close to the stands' rail is an advantage, on soft ground they drift over to the far side anyway, so his habit should not be too disadvantageous.  He seems still to be in very good heart - in fact, I'm expecting to find that his run over hurdles will have done him good, toughened him up a bit - and he should handle what will be extremely soft ground, so we'll travel hopefully.  As we always do!

Kryptos was also entered tomorrow (at Pontefract) but, while it was tempting to back him up after his good run at Nottingham on Wednesday, we have ended up not doing so.  I went to Nottingham feeling that I'd be a bit disappointed if he didn't win, but I came away happy with second as he ran a very sound race, doing well on ground that was a bit more taxing both than I had been expecting and than is ideal for him, and only went down to a horse both very well handicapped at present after several luckless defeats and also very well suited by very soft ground.  William Buick rode him beautifully and, particularly pleasingly, was extremely complimentary about him afterwards, which was rather nice as when a jockey regularly rides some of the best horses in the world, eg Ghaiyyath, it would be understandable if he wasn't quite as in awe of Kryptos as we are.

Hopefully Kryptos can have one more go this season, at Newmarket in 12 days' time.  We just want the weather to settle down (which it actually has done the last couple of days - so what we want is for it to remain fairly settled through this week and next, which might be asking a bit much) and the ground thus not to be too heavy, and you'd hope that he'd run very well there too.  Between now and then I hope that The Rocket Park (entered at Newbury on Friday but likely to wait for an AW option the following week as Newbury could be too soft for him) and Hidden Pearl (similarly steering clear of turf when it's wet) might have both had a run.