Lockdown looms

We had two thirds to show for our two runners last week, Hidden Pearl at Chelmsford on Thursday evening and Kryptos at Newmarket on Friday afternoon.  The filly ran well, hitting the front at the top of the straight but being passed in the final furlong by the right two horses, ie the favourite who had won last time out and Wildomar, who finished second for the second race in a row, having won the time before that.  She went off at 50/1, but that made no sense.  I had been surprised that she was as long as 20/1, and amazed that she then drifted to 50s.

She had had a frustrating summer, running five times but - unbelievably in what was a very sunny season - never running on fast ground, which I believe to be her preferred surface.  Strange but true.  Three times (at Catterick and then twice at Bath) it rained hard overnight going into the race and in the morning, significantly softening the ground.  So we've obviously missed that fast-ground boat, but hopefully we might do a better job in catching it next summer.  One might think that there are plenty of meetings on fast ground, but that's by the by: the only meetings that matter from the point of view of any one horse are those which contain a race suitable for that horse, and that's only ever a handful.

Between now and our next season of trying (and probably failing again) to find a suitable race for her on fast ground, we have a winter of AW racing ahead of her and, while I still believe that fast turf will be her ideal scenario, she has now run at Chelmsford three times for a second and two thirds, so hopefully we can keep going back a few times.  She really deserves a win, and I hope that she can achieve that goal at some point in the next few months.  These Class Six races are no easier to win than races in the higher grades - harder, arguably, as they are always numerically very competitive - but we and she will keep trying.

Kryptos' run was as I'd feared.  I'd have been very confident had the race been run on ground just a bit softer than good, but it was extremely heavy and on that ground I regarded him as being very beatable.  But, with one non-runner, we were favourite in a four-runner race with Ryan Moore booked, and under the circumstances it would have been a very strange decision to make him a non-runner, especially as he has won on 'soft'.  Anyway, he did his best and ran well, but he weakened in the final 300m to finish third.  It was the same as when he ran at Sandown at the end of August: a strongly-run 10 furlongs on a stiff track on very soft ground does just test his stamina to the limit.  But no harm done, and we'll probably have a try on the AW before we call it a day for this season with him.

We have no runners coming up this week, but I'll have a quasi-trip to the races, ie to the Sky Sports Racing stoodio overnight Monday into Tuesday for Flemington's Melbourne Cup race-meeting.  I've been lucky enough to do this nearly every year for the best part of 20 years and I always enjoy it, even though it is quite a test of stamina for someone who is usually in bed by 8.30.  The hardest part is the drive home, harder than the riding out once I'm here: it would be hard to fall asleep on the back of a horse, but it's easy enough to do so in a car.  But hopefully I'll get through the night and morning OK, and then do plenty of sleeping after that.

October has been a long month simply because of the depressing fact of it raining pretty much every day, which is a double whammy (a) because the rain isn't very pleasant while it's falling on you, and (b) it's doubly unpleasant once it's fallen because one doesn't get much evaporation in winter and so the rain just lies around the property until next spring, making the place very muddy.  But that's winter, and it's the same for everyone lucky enough to work outdoors.  It goes back to my old observation that the best part of the job is also the worst part: the weather.

And, anyway, we can't really complain about being outside in the bad weather when we're about to go back into lockdown and so many people will become prisoners in their own homes.  If that indeed happens - it's hard to see the populace taking this lockdown as seriously as the last.  We've just got so used to taking everything this government says with a pinch of salt, and the Cummings debacle plus the umpteen subsequent examples of croneyism (the Queen's Honours List comes immediately to mind, not to mention the awarding of contracts and jobs) will hardly have helped to bring people round to the belief that 'we're all in this together'.