Tuesday, November 24, 2020

One day at a time


Well, that's good news, the story yesterday about sporting events being able to have up to 4,000 spectators from 3rd December onwards.  It seems a little hard to believe, bearing in mind that plans to allow limited audiences were shelved back in the second half of the summer when the COVID situation was much less bad than it is now.  And presumably it'll only happen in Tier One areas, which I would guess means that it only applies to fairly rural racecourses.  And I/we might have misunderstood things anyway, bearing in mind that I, in common with the rest of the British population (and that includes the politicians), have by now reached the stage of having pretty much no idea what the protocols are.


So we'll just do what we have been doing anyway, ie taking it one day at a time.  And in this case, that means getting ready for tomorrow, when we'll head to Lingfield with Kryptos.  He has, as we discovered today when the week's updated ratings list was released, been raised 4lb for his win last week, so is 1lb 'wrong' under his 5lb penalty.  That's never entirely satisfactory, but in this case it seemed the correct thing to do to run as there are very few suitable races for him at this time of year.  The most suitable one isn't until Boxing Day and that's a long way away, so we decided that this was likely to be the least unsuitable of all the options coming up.


In addition to a 5lb penalty, we will be up another 3lb because Megan Nicholls rode her 95th winner when he won, which means that she had a 3lb claim that day but won't have one tomorrow.  However, we can't be worrying about that: she rode him perfectly so it was the obvious thing to do to ask her ride him again.  She's been riding as well as a good senior jockey anyway, so she'll be fine without an allowance.  One wasn't using her because she had a claim; one was using her because one wanted one's horse ridden very well, and the 3lb claim was a gift.  But, of course, it's a gift which we won't have tomorrow, so all in all we are 8lb higher (and racing at a different track, which is worth considering as each AW track presents its own unique challenges) tomorrow, and that could make things difficult.  But he'll do his best, and we'll hope for the best.


Oh, yes, before I go I should just touch upon our trip to Huntingdon on Saturday.  It was a lovely sunny day (which was particularly remarkable as we usually find ourselves racing at night at this time of year - although tomorrow we shall again be racing in daylight, and as it's 12.30 tomorrow, we could again not only be racing in daylight but getting home in daylight, just about) and a pleasure to be there.  Das Kapital showed the benefit of his first run and was more poised at his jumps, jumping beautifully until making a couple of mistakes late on when he was getting tired.  He wasn't good enough, but that almost goes without saying for a 55-rated Flat horse racing in a maiden hurdle.  But he'll be OK when he's eligible to race in his correct grade, ie in handicaps.

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