Pleasing

Well, I survived our busy period (four racedays in seven days, with five runners) although I'm definitely ready for an early bed tonight.  I'd hoped that we might have had a winner - in fact, I was very hopeful of a winner when we went to Nottingham yesterday - and that didn't happen, but that's not the end of the world.  The horse running in a novice race (Eljaytee at Windsor) predictably didn't trouble the principals, although I had actually expected a bit more from him than we got - hopefully just a temporary setback.  But the four horses running in handicaps all fared reasonably well.  

I found myself in a slightly strange situation with Cloudy Rose at Bath as the ground dried up a lot in the final day before racing (it went from 'good to firm, good in places' to 'good to firm, firm in places' overnight) which was rather odd as it wasn't particularly hot, and that was clearly unlikely to suit a horse who had seemed so well suited by the soft ground on her previous run.  But at the same time she is a sound filly and we were in a four-runner race, so it would have been very hard to justify not running.  It duly turned out that a horse who seems to have stamina well in excess of speed didn't find the very quick conditions playing to her strengths, but that wasn't the end of the world.  

At Yarmouth, Hidden Pearl did what she often does, ie she didn't run badly, but she didn't run well enough.  She looked sure to finish in the frame for the first half of the home straight, but she was quite tame in the final furlong and weakened into fifth.  We actually only finished one place and one length behind the horse whom I had expected to win the race (last-start Catterick winner Go On Gal) and in advance I would happily have settled for that, except that I wouldn't have expected their finishing positions to be fourth and fifth.  But she keeps showing enough to make one feel that eventually her day should come.

And then we came to Nottingham yesterday afternoon.  I thought that we had a realistic chance of having a double, although Denman's three-parts brother Didtheyleaveyououtto did look thrown in on his National Hunt form.  Furthermore, on the face of it, bearing in mind how weak the opposition and how slow the time had been when Dereham had won at Yarmouth last time, his 10lb rise was always going to hard to defy.  But he did his best again, in effect putting in a better performance than he had done when winning at Yarmouth, and he was a close and very sound third.  He's a grand little horse who seems to be progressing nicely.

And then we came to Turn Of Phrase later in the afternoon.  When you go to the races thinking that you have a chance of a double, you know that realistically you aren't going to do so (although it is obviously possible, as the bang-in-form William Jarvis demonstrated at Nottingham yesterday) and that if you can manage one win, that will be grand.  Dereham hadn't won his race, so Turn Of Phrase had become our only chance of a winner.  She didn't win, but she still ran very well, second of 13, beaten half a length by the favourite, four lengths clear of the third.  That, like Dereham's run, was very pleasing.  She's entered there on Monday and seems to have come out of the race very well, so it makes sense to run there off her current rating before her mark is inevitably raised later in the week.

So that was our racing week.  All very pleasant - and the lovely weather has helped, of course.  It's good having people at the races again, even if Nottingham yesterday did seem disappointingly poorly attended.  The highlight of my race-going week was that Gina Mangan rode a winner at Windsor on Monday, and the lowlight was that I managed to miss the race.  I can't believe it.  There's always so much to do at the races that I find that if I am to know what is happening, I would find out more if I were at home rather than there.  I felt so stupid as Gina was just about the first person whom we saw when we entered the stable-yard, and then I completely missed her winner.  I'd felt silly not seeing Liam Jones' comeback winner at Brighton the previous week, but this was, if possible, even more stupid.

For Gina it arguably wasn't quite the comeback that it was for Liam, but it wasn't far off it.  She had a terrible fall at home (ie at Dave Evans' yard) just over two years, breaking her leg so badly that for a short time the surgeon was contemplating removing it.  Miraculously she healed well enough to resume race-riding not much more than a year later, but then she was still having problems with the leg and had to have another operation last winter.  She was off for a long time and only resumed race-riding a couple of weeks ago.  She'd been beaten only a head on an outsider at Chepstow last Friday, but at Windsor on Monday she went one better on what I think was only her third ride back.   That was just such a lovely result and I was very pleased I was there to see her (if not it!).

Liam and Gina have, of course, been merely two of three jockeys to have made remarkable comebacks from lengthy absences recently.  As we continue our overview of local riders (Gina obviously technically doesn't qualify as she has been working for David Evans for about three years now, but she is in the 'formerly of this parish' category) we can't omit Robert Tart's great triumph at Chester the other week.  Rob wasn't absent from the racecourse because of injury, but he gets disheartened relatively easily (and, by the way, never underestimate the will power required by a jockey to maintain a race-riding career when he/she isn't getting many rides - the jockey can't drop his/her guard even for a day, with the fitness and the weight-control, and when he/she is not getting many rides it can become hard to justify still doing it, particularly as much more effort is required to keep the fitness and the weight right when only riding occasionally - the surprise is that some do stick at it when not getting many rides, rather than that some don't) and he hadn't ridden in a race for about four years.

Rob was a very, very good apprentice with Alan Bailey, and then he enjoyed plenty of success when working for John Gosden, most obviously winning a Group race at Sandown on Cunco, a listed race at Goodwood on Monarchs Glen, and a handicap at Beverley on Stradivarius, but he seemed to have given up on the race-riding and more recently he had just been riding out.  Happily, though, presumably prompted by encouragement from his boss Jane Chapple-Hyam, he's taken out a license again this year and his comeback ride at Chester really was a fairytale: he hadn't ridden in a race for something like 1,500 days and his mount hadn't run for nearly 1,000 days, but they won.  Wonderful.  There will be plenty of nice stories coming out of Ascot next week and we'll hear plenty of them, but there won't be a result as pleasing as these ones mentioned here.