Bank Holiday weekend - it had to rain!

What a difference a day makes. Yesterday was very warm and sunny; today it has rained for hours and it's considerably colder. It being a Sunday, the horses get to chose how much exercise they do (which is usually quite a lot, as they play around even more than normal if they've missed their usual morning ride) because their frolicking in the field is their only outing. I didn't put them out until early afternoon, waiting for the rain to ease off, and the delay made them even happier to be out when eventually they were. Rain doesn't bother horses - although it does bother humans - and I received a good reminder of how little horses are fazed by it when eventually I did turn the day shift out: they frolicked and rolled. And in the case of Brief Goodbye, Jill Dawson and Anis Etoile, they rolled and rolled some more, loving the wet ground. It's great to see them so well, particularly in the case of Brief, who ran another tremendous race yesterday, finishing an honourable second over fourteen furlongs in the last race at Newmarket. He looked to pull up from that race very well, and today's display of well-being in the field has merely confirmed that impression. He's provided all involved with him with so many lovely days, and yesterday was another one of those. I'd say two miles will be his go in the future, because he saw out the race really well yesterday, and ran the type of race where you just come away feeling so proud that your horse has run so well - rather than regretting that finishing second means that you haven't won.

It was a really pleasant afternoon at Newmarket, further enlivened by the opportunity to see some really nice horses. The winner of the two-year-old maiden, Alkahfif, looked a potential star when making a winning debut. By Royal Applause from the Danehill mare My First Romance, he has bags of scope and, while he's bred just to sprint (by a sprinter, he is a half-brother to two Queen Mary winners) one could see him ending up a contender for next year's 2,000 Guineas, if that isn't too fanciful. I always have a soft spot for members of this family, because I remember his dam as foal and yearling at Woodditton Stud when I worked there. Born in 1992, she was one of the early Danehills, and was the daughter of one of the stud's permanent boarders (Front Line Romance, who was very bad-tempered) and grand-daughter of another (old Bottom Line, who was very nice). All these horses were owned by Jerry Sung, whose trainer Michael Jarvis trained My First Romance, who achieved nothing as a racehorse - which was disappointing, because she was a lovely strong foal - but who has subsequently proved herself a wonderful matron for Bearstone Stud, who have bred three Royal Ascot winners from her (Zargus, winner of the Balmoral Handicap, being the third, in addition to Queen Mary heroines Romantic Myth and Romantic Liason); I'd say that Alkahfif will go to the Coventry Stakes with a good chance of becoming her fourth.

One wouldn't want to do it today in such wet conditions, but yesterday evening provided idyllic barbecue conditions - even if it did become a bit cooler than ideal at dusk - and this proved a very pleasant way of ending a very nice day, as Larry and Iris McCarthy, plus their friend Rachel, stopped off here for a couple of hours before heading back to London. A barbecue can provide the stimulus for getting very drunk, but I found the perfect solution to that problem: Gemma appeared and started making cocktails, which proved to be a guarantee of sobriety, because it transpired that cocktails aren't very nice. Mind you, other people seemed to think otherwise, but to my mind it's a given that when a recipe contains only ingredients which I don't like - how about tequila, lime juice and cranberry juice for an appealing trifecta? - it's a given that what it produces will also be something which I don't like. So I feel great today - although whether I will still do so after a few more hours in the rain, including when we are up at the racecourse with Imperial Decree, is debatable. Being rained on, though, would be the least of poor Neil Pollard's worries: I received a message from his agent yesterday afternoon that he was in hospital having X-rays on a suspected broken collar bone, having had a fall riding out in the morning. He's down for Imperial Decree but it sounds as if he won't be on her: I left a message at the racecourse with Liam Jones' valet asking if he'd like to ride - he's in the race before ours (the last) but is not engaged in ours - so I'd guess he'll be on board. And if he enjoys the ride as much as I enjoyed galloping Anis Etoile yesterday morning, then all will be well.

The fourth ageless horseman - plus some more

It's good that, since his appearance in this blog alongside his contemporaries Neville Wilson and Robert Thompson, Richard Sims has been making regular contributions to the comments section. When I came up with the three horsemen of the antipodes, I thought I'd have to find the fourth sooner rather than later, and this was duly achieved when Garry Murphy rode the Empire's three-year-old Miss Freelove in her debut at Edenhope; yes, the same Garry Murphy who rode Karaman to finish second to Manikato in the Blue Diamond thirty years ago and who nowadays seems to look younger every day. Are there any hoops over here who were riding in the '70s? I don't think so; at least none as senior jockeys. Kevin Darley would probably have ridden out his claim pre-1980, or maybe not, but he retired last year; Richard Quinn and Dean McKeown would both have been claiming well into the '80s, and Philip Robinson would only be of similar vintage. Mick Kinane was only a young jockey when he rode Carlingford Castle to be second in the Derby in 1983, so he'd definitely have been claiming at the start of the '80s. The jockey who kept riding for John Oxx forever would have been a senior jockey by the mid-70s (Dermot Hogan?), but I haven't noticed him having a ride for a year or two; and I doubt if Pat Shanahan is any more senior than Mick Kinane. So, anyway, hats off to Garry Murphy, who by all accounts provided a very satisfactory service on Miss Freelove.

All the older horsemen I've seen here recently have been ex-jockeys - and you can't go very far in this town without bumping into several of them. I paid my first visit to an ex-jockeys' enclave yesterday, visiting Colin and Eileen Casey in the flat at the bottom of Side Hill into which they moved last week. It's a lovely flat in a lovely setting, and yet another tribute to the good work the Injured Jockeys' Fund does in keeping former riders safe in their retirements. They are next to Jimmy Uttley - forever remembered for riding Persian War to three Champion Hurdle victories - and just above the former Royal jockey Willie Snaith, alongside whom Colin started his apprenticeship with Sam Armstrong near Middleham during the war, before that stable relocated to Warren Place in 1947.

I'd started the day by bumping into Ian Watkinson at the bottom of Exeter Road - he was loading one of Jonathan Jay's horses into his lorry - who happily told me that he'd sent his latest comment to the Racing Post Chatroom expressing his disappointment over Sam Thomas getting lost at Fakenham. In Sam Thomas' defence, I would say that navigating one's route around Britain's National Hunt courses is now much more complicated than it was when Ian was riding (or even than it was in the very brief, more recent, period when I was riding) because nowadays the course maps are littered with contingency plans for bypassing jumps, but Ian does have a point; and one wonders how a jockey who could take the wrong course during a race would cope if he ever became a show-jumper - particularly during a shortened-course jump-off! And from one off-the-wall ex-jockey to another, I then bumped into Richard Fox in Waitrose on my way back from Chateau Casey, who took great delight in asking me whether I'd heard that racing at Ayr (the latest going debacle at the track) had been abandoned because they had discovered a patch of soft ground ("Imagine saying 'I don't want to ride today because there's a patch of soft ground over there'!"). Again, I think it's not quite that straightforward - I'd feel that it's more an issue with safety for the horses than the jockeys, as galloping a horse from firm ground onto a brief patch of very soft ground and then straight back onto the firm is a pretty good test of whether he's likely to break down - but you had, as always, to smile at Richard's style of delivery. Certainly the woman on the check-out did: as he walked away, she turned to me and said, "He's a very funny man". And I don't think you'd find anyone to disagree with that.

And from one very funny man to one very funny thing. (And I don't, in this second instance, mean funny in the humourous sense). Our former inmate Marvin Gardens ran at Yarmouth for the Wigham/McEntee training team. As some of you may remember, Marvin arrived here as a four-year-old maiden last year, rated 40. We ran him twice, in which races he finished third of 16 in a selling handicap (off the minimum permitted mark of 45) at Yarmouth, recording his best ever Topspeed figure of 44, and then finishing unplaced in a non-selling handicap (again off 45) at Musselburgh, recording his second-best Topspeed figure ever (34). He then left the stable. And then he reappeared at Yarmouth last week, in a 0-55 Classified Stakes, in which common sense would dictate that he had not much chance. The 20/1 quote in the Racing Post seemed fair enough - except that he started the 7/2 favourite! I actually took this quite badly, because anyone who could have backed him in that race must have a very low opinion of me as a trainer. I'd fancy that, if we'd been able to keep him, he would have won a race eventually, but it would have needed to have been a very weak one, and certainly not off a mark as high as 55 - so whoever backed him must think I'm a useless trainer to believe that he could have improved so much for leaving here. Anyway, the punch-line is that he finished 12th of 14, beaten 23 lengths, recording a Topspeed figure of zero and a Postmark of two. That made it slightly easier to see the funny side.

Let's hope we can get better runs than that from Brief and Imperial Decree at Newmarket this weekend. Despite having won seven times, Brief has never won two in a row and never won at single-figure odds, which suggests he won't win this weekend; but even so he ought to have the better chance of the pair. But as long as we get two competitive runs and have two sound horses afterwards I'll be happy.

Thoughts from the weekend

I'm afraid that we had a disappointing trip to Thirsk but, bearing in mind that there was one race there in which two horses broke down, I don't think that we have too many reasons to feel sorry for ourselves, with Polly safely back home and galivanting around the field as I write. With the ground being firm two days in advance of the meeting, the racecourse had naturally watered the track, which meant that the surprisingly large amount of rain which arrived in advance of racing on Saturday resulted in the ground being very loose, particularly on the bends. In such a situation it is inevitable that a few horses are going to end up with a few things amiss, and that some won't have the confidence in their footing to put their best hoof forward; and I suspect that Polly will prove to have fallen into both camps, as she wasn't blowing at all after the race and will, I am sure, be found to have a few minor things wrong in her back and quarters when Carol looks at her tomorrow. So the trip was a bit of an anti-climax, but the filly lives to fight another day, which she surely will do.

The race in which two horses broke down was the mile-and-a-half maiden, which was interesting for a variety of reasons. The field was a very mixed bunch - well, that's actually being kind, because most of the runners looked very ordinary indeed. The odds-on favourite was Warringah, a son of Galileo trained by Michael Stoute who had given his much better-fancied, and subsequently Dante-winning, stablemate Tartan Bearer a fright at Leicester last month on his only previous outing. He was an odd horse, really, as he looked like Ex Con: just a lovely big, fat (although not nearly as fat as Ex Con) backward potential National Hunt horse. He couldn't possibly win the race, could he? But then again none of his rivals looked as if they could do so either. Mick Channon ran a full-sister to the lovely multiple winning stayer Misternando, who looked ordinary enough but very fit, Howard Johnson ran a grey debutant by High Chaparral, a lovely horse who still looked fairly backward, Henry Cecil ran his Helissio, who looked alright I suppose, but who isn't nearly as nice as our one, and Eoghan O'Neill ran a nice big - but still backward - Danehill Dancer (another Ex Con!). And Mark Johnston ran a horse who was impossible to judge, as he sported a large sweat-sheet during the preliminaries. As it turned out, Warringah, ridden by Callan not as well as he had been by JD Smith at Leicester(ie Callan made less use of him, which I don't think was ideal for such a horse, particularly at Thirsk), ran as we have learned to expect from a still-a-long-way-from-fully-fit horse second up after a surprisingly good run first up (ie disappointingly) to finish fourth behind Mark Johnston's winner, Mick Channon's filly and Howard Johnson's debutant. Henry Cecil's filly and Eoghan's colt came just behind them, with the really odd assortment of other horses - one of whom looked like a bay version of Flint (the cob Emma borrowed for the summer three years ago) and ran accordingly - coming home at intervals behind them. (Mark Johnston actually ran two in the race, the other finishing tailed off last - of those who finished, another horse having been pulled up lame midway around the first bend - and evidently broke down in the process; but I hadn't even registered in advance that he had two runners, just assuming each time this huge sheet walked past me that it was the same sheet each time). Anyway, and I'll get to the point now, why on earth is this allowed? Regular readers of this blog will know of the fact that I don't think horses should be allowed to wear anything other than the tack in which they are going to race in the parade ring: it makes a complete mockery of the point of having a parade ring if the only the horses' heads, necks, legs and tails are visible as the horses walk around it. Granted that there is an argument for covering the horses' saddles in the rain to make things less uncomfortable for the jockeys, but otherwise paddock clothing serves no purpose - and any trainer who tells you otherwise is either lying or stupid. Of course there are trainers who see racing as a game of poker in which the cards should, as a matter of course, be played as close to the chest as possible, and invariably making the horses' condition as hard for on-lookers to assess in advance, which appears to be the policy of Mark and of Saeed bin Suroor, is a natural extension of this. One can't knock the trainers for this, because the rules permit it - but my point is that the rules shouldn't. I know that, in one sense, it doesn't really matter - at Thirsk on Saturday, for instance, there was a huge crowd, of which only a small proportion of the race-goers went to look at the horses in the parade ring, and this is pretty much the way it usually is - but you could say the same about so many things which are of minimal significance to the majority but which are clearly worth worrying about in the mind of anyone who takes minor details seriously.

Which takes us neatly on to the matter of Big Brown, although I'd suggest that the problem here isn't a minor detail. What a lovely horse he is - and what a terrible shame it is that, while we ought to be rejoicing absolutely in his victories, our pleasure is sullied by the whole steroids issue. Of course one need not condemn his trainer for openly announcing that on the 15th day of every month the horse receives a shot of the same steroid which helped Ben Johnson to win at the Olympics (and caused millions of people worldwide to become completely disenchanted with the sport of athletics in the process) because the rules of racing in America permit this steroid to be given to horses - and, if a trainer is serious about trying to get his charges to race as well as possible, surely it is his duty to take all legal measures to help them to do so? Unlikeable though Rick Dutrow appears to be, we shouldn't condemn him by claming that it is his fault that he perceives it as his duty to train his entire string on steroids. It isn't his fault; it is the fault of the administrators of American racing who are letting down the whole sport, not only within their own country but all around the world, by their sin of omission in continuing to do nothing about rewriting their rule-books in line with what would be seen as contemporary professional standards in any other sport.

To happier matters, one race I really enjoyed watching on Saturday was the opener, a two-year-old fillies' maiden. This again had a mixed bag - and it really was a mixed bag this time because, in addition to the majority of very unimpressive horses who ran as badly as they looked in advance that they were likely to do, there were at least four very nice horses in the field. First and second are clearly on the brink of good careers (injuries permitting): Haigh Hall, a daughter of Kyllachy trained by Tim Easterby, and Excellent Show, a daughter of Exceed And Excel trained by Bryan Smart. And the third, Sparta Rebel, a daughter of Spartacus trained by Mark Wallace, is also a nice filly. But what was really pleasing was the debut of the fourth, Black Salix, trained by one of our favourite trainers, Pam Sly, and racing for the same connections and in the same colours as did Speciosa. It would be a colossal leap of faith to say that Black Salix, a daughter of More Than Ready, is going to emulate Speciosa's achievements (notwithstanding that she probably ran better first up than Speciosa did) but I was delighted to note that she is a lovely filly who showed bags of promise in finishing a good fourth behind three nice horses who looked significantly more forward than she is. Big Brown might be the latest to dent one's faith in any belief about the sun shining on the righteous, but Speciosa did plenty to restore such faith, and fingers crossed this filly will do so too.

And further bolstering of that belief would be provided by a good run from Joolzy (Spaceage Juliet) when she aims for her second metropolitan win on Wednesday at Sandown (Vic). I haven't checked out the times so don't know if it will fall within our 3am to 6am At The Races Australian racing slot, or whether we shall have to listen to the TAB radio on the internet. But, however we follow the race, we shall no doubt hear a few cheers from members of the Empire (pictured) drowning out the commentary in the final stages if she is fighting out the finish. And just before I sign off, I can't resist the temptation to pass on this description of the group which one of the Empire members, holding court in a mood of remarkable expansiveness, recently came out with: "Okay, we're a pugnacious lot of savages. Let's say the Empire has a selective approach to right and wrong. We're religious - but not so religious we aren't secular. And if some crazy policeman ever tried to enforce the criminal code among us, half of us would be in gaol, and the other half would be standing in the street with Kalashnikovs, getting us out. We're a bunch of unruly punters who love M.Rodd, drink, fight, boast, steal, monitor weather patterns, fluke the odd trifecta, wage blood-feuds and can't be organised into groups of more than one. Want some more? Alliances and politics, forget them. You can make us any promise you like, break it, and we'll believe you again tomorrow. We've got a diaspora no one's heard of and suffering you can't get on television, even with a special aerial. We don't like bullies, and we don't have hereditary peerages, and we hadn't produced a despot in a thousand years until SM (David Dumas) came along. Here's to Joolzy."

A busy week

You can tell when I've not got much on, and you can tell when I'm snowed under - and nothing added to the blog for well over a week means I've been busy. Doing what? Hard to say, really. We are busy enough in the stable just now, and I've just had some catching up to do in the office, but I feel a bit more organised now so I just thought I'd put fingers to keyboard briefly in advance of our trip to Thirsk tomorrow. Polly aims to build on her last-start staying-on third over seven furlongs at Folkestone by competing over a mile there tomorrow. The extra distance should help her, but will it be enough? I don't know. The facts that the ground might be quite fast - I don't think they've had the rain farther north that we've had here over the past day - and that she's drawn 15 of 18 contribute to my thinking that she might find them still going a bit too fast for her at the mile, but we'll see. She will have a different jockey. The two who have ridden her previously, Neil Pollard and Kirsty Milczarek, are both unavailable - Neil because he's riding at Newmarket for Willie Musson, and Kirsty because she's riding against us for her boss Marco Botti - but the fact that we've ended up with the excellent Paul Mulrennan, one of the best jockeys in the country, never mind the north, will not be a disadvantage. So let's hope for a pleasing day.

I've really enjoyed the fact that several very deserving people have recently enjoyed nice days. Top of the list has to be Chris Dwyer, whose purple patch hit new heights yesterday when Mia's Boy and Jimmy Quinn landed a thrilling win in the Listed Hambleton Cup at York. Cliff has been taking some of Chris' runners to the races and he led him up, so let's hope he can pay another visit to the winner's enclosure with Polly tomorrow. Throw in lovely old Geordieland's victory under an outstandingly cool ride from Shane Kelly - and great to see him announce his return from the long suspension through which he has conducted himself so admirably in such fine style - in today's Yorkshire Cup, and the Listed race win for Marco Botti's very brave filly Raymi Coyma under Kerrin McEvoy half an hour later, and we've had a really good York May Meeting. And sandwiched in amongst all this has been the win of good old Monsam for his enthusiastic part-breeder and part-owner Richard Sims at Bendigo today, which was really nice.

Less nice has been the weather. The great week and a bit of summer weather - I heard something about Britain having its highest May temperature ever recorded, but I don't know if that's right - couldn't last, and when we turned on the television for Yarmouth (where the weather is never as nice as you expect) on Tuesday and saw that it looked cold and very, very grey, the writing was on the wall. Cue Matt Chapman's exclamation of shock, "We haven't seen weather like this for at least a week". And, sure enough, it couldn't last much longer, and by Thursday it was gone. But happily the summer did last for Wednesday, when Emma and I enjoyed a blissful drive to the west side of the country to see Desiree's three-day old foal, who shall be called Oscar Bernadotte. Mother and son are doing really well, as well they might living in the luxury of one of Britain's loveliest studs, Batsford Stud, just outside Moreton-In-The-Marsh, and under the care of a really nice studmaster, Alan Pavey. It was a lovely visit, and topped off by calling in to see Desiree's prospective husband Kayf Tara at Overbury Stud, where Simon Sweeting showed us him as well as his two other stallions, Proclamation and Zafeen. Kayf Tara is such a lovely horse, and is justly in much demand. We saw him at 5pm and he'd already covered three mares that day - and had another lined up for eight that evening. You can understand him being docile with that schedule, but all the stallions there seem very placid, which I think is no coincidence, because Simon seems to have their routines very happily organised. They live in a courtyard in which some mares are also stabled, and they seem very content with their lots indeed.

That was one outing, and another we've had since I last posted was our trip to Lingfield last Friday. Jill ran awfully well on her resumption: she didn't win, but it was an excellent second, so that bodes well for the rest of her campaign. She was in the first race, and I then spent the rest of the afternoon co-presenting the At The Races programme with Jim McGrath, which I really enjoyed. There was an additional highlight because we bumped into Brian Rouse, whom I really admired as a jockey and whom I'd never met. Just over thirty years on from his 1,000 Guineas victory on Quick As Lightning for John Dunlop, he looked really well and he came across as a really nice, really unassuming man. He and his wife were there on an Injured Jockeys' Fund outing, which I guess Hugo Bevan might have been organising because Hugo was there and he's very involved with the IJF; Tony Clark was there too, looking very fit and well - too much so to be an EX-jockey, really - and he might have been involved with that too; or he might have been there in his new role as salesman for Mactrack all-weather gallops. It was a very pleasant day, although quite a long one as we collected Anthony on the way home, which made for a long, slow Friday evening crawl around the M25. But that was a very worthwhile trek, as he was in great form over the weekend, enjoying all sorts of activities around the yard, including having his first rides on Panto, which he seemed really to enjoy. We'd told him that he could ride him once he'd had his birthday, and when I went to pick him up he said, "I'm five now so I'll bring my hat so that I can ride Panto". It's lovely to see him so keen on the horses, as the picture at the top of this blog shows - even though if it was an either/or between horses and tractors, the horses wouldn't get a look-in!

A special day

Our thoughts turned heavenwards yesterday when, on a real red-letter Bank Holiday Monday, Brief won at Windsor. Brief's been a grand servant to his connections and this stable. He's now eight-years-young. He won once at three (at Salisbury), twice at four (at Musselburgh and Newbury), once at five (at Sandown) and twice at six (at Windsor and Haydock), providing some magical moments in the process. Three days after his win at Haydock in September 2006, Joe McCarthy - as kind and decent a man as one could ever meet, over and above being as supportive a patron and friend that any trainer could ever have - died suddenly. Following Bold Cardowan and Stormy Crest, Brief was the third lovely horse to carry Joe's colours, and happily Brief still carries them: Joe had raced the horses in partnership with his daughter Larry, and she now races them (Jill, co-owned by Iris' relative Jason and Fiona Hathorn, being the other), in partnership with her mother Iris. For the first time since he was two, Brief endured a winless season last year, so when he came out of winter quarters with a bang yesterday it was his first success since Joe's death. As you can therefore imagine, yesterday's success was a very emotional day as well as a very happy one. All winners are very special but, as yesterday reminded us, some are more special than others.

Obviously, in any win the lion's share of the credit goes to the horse. However, there are always so many human contributors to any victory - and, if we do enjoy a good season this year, it'll be thanks largely to the efforts of Hugh and Martha: they do the bulk of the work here, and are the basis of what I regard as as good a team as we've ever had. So many people pitch in to help, including regular riding contributions from Aisling, Gemma, Jamie, Desna, Suze et al., and I hope that Jamie will have allowed himself a feeling of great satisfaction yesterday evening, because he has ridden Brief, and ridden him extremely well, on the vast majority of the morning exercises which the horse has enjoyed this year. Jamie certainly deserves to feel proud after yesterday's win. And, although the jockey's role in a win is, despite what the press would usually have us believe, generally of minimal significance in the great scheme of things, I was delighted to pat Adrian McCarthy on the back in the winner's enclosure. He's a very pleasant lad whose permanent grin I've had to look at for years - I recall getting a good view of it the evening he rode his first winner, on a filly called Times Of Times at Yarmouth for his then-boss Mick Ryan, because Times Of Times, Statistician, Adrian, Squeak and myself all travelled to and from Yarmouth in the same horsebox that evening - and I'm very pleased that he's developed into a good, helpful and sensible jockey (even if retaining a touch of the larrikin) and that now we've been able to put him on a winner. And the right winner at that, ie one owned by his namesakes, because as Iris confided to him in the parade ring before the race, "Any time I'm at the races and you've got a ride, I always have a bet on you - I tell people you're my nephew"!

And finally one other person who can't go unmentioned in the review of Brief's win is another of the good men whom we have lost recently, Leslie Harrison. Leslie, as many will know, oversaw the entire career of Brief's sire Slip Anchor (who is still alive, but living in retirement at Plantation Stud) - and I mean the ENTIRE career, right from initially going to Germany to select and buy his dam Sayonara on behalf of Lord Howard de Walden. (Joe, incidentally, arrived at Brief Goodbye's name from two of his grandparents, Brief Truce being his dam's sire and Sayonara being his sire's dam). Leslie was another who was with us when Brief had last won but who is no longer around, and I know that he too would have been up there looking down with a smile on his face yesterday.

And for a very special occasion, what better than a lovely early summer's day? Summer seems to have arrived, and today I duly rode out for the first time this year in my shorts, which should at least put an end to the "About time you got the shorts out"s that I've been having to endure on a daily basis. I had my first sighting of three of Mike De Kock's summer visitors this morning, and also caught my first glimpse of Seachange at exercise. Newmarket Heath on summer mornings is a very special place, so let's hope that we have plenty of idyllic days to savour before next winter inevitably comes around all too quickly.

All the lovely horses

I see that it's four days since I last posted a chapter on this blog, but it feels like a lot, lot more. We duly headed down to Folkestone on Thursday, which excursion proved, by our standards, to be a very good one, with Filemot finishing second and Polychrome third; and even the unplaced run of Imperial Decree wasn't unsatisfactory, because I think she might possibly just have needed the outing. Although one could almost say that she looked the fittest of the trio, I think that would be deceptive, and fingers crossed she should improve for the outing. Filemot looked easily the least ready, which wasn't surprising as she was the debutante and as such is the least seasoned and mature of them, but happily she confirmed the impression of her home-work that she is very fast, and she gave us the opportunity to continue to hope that we might have an above-average sprinter on our hands. And Polychrome managed to finish third despite running (again) as if she will do better over farther. So, all in all, it was a good day. The funny thing was that I wasn't nervous in advance. If just any one of the three had been running I would have been really nervous, because it is important for the survival of the business that the horses run well, and one might think that three runners would mean three times the anxiety: not so, as I discovered, and I think that it was a case of, while one goes to the races with one horse and is aware that one could come home disappointed, with three I was basically just very confident that at least one of the three would give us cause for optimism and/or satisfaction - and I'm evidently so easily pleased that one ray of hope suffices! It must be very relaxing overseeing large teams of runners, because one will be buffered by the almost-certainty that happy results are going to come along fairly regular just by sheer weight of numbers.

After three runners last week, we are likely have two this week, with Brief Goodbye engaged in the last race at Windsor tomorrow, and then Jill Dawson entered at Lingfield on Friday. With Brief one never really knows what to expect, but I think he should have enough things in his favour tomorrow to run well: certainly he seems well, and the peace dividend of his winless campaign last year is that, at 70, he's rated lower than he's been for a few years. Age doesn't appear in any way to be wearying him, so that fact alone allows us some optimism. Ahead of Jill's resumption, her behaviour at the stalls has been the over-riding factor in my mind. Although, having passed a stalls test (by the skin of her teeth) last autumn, she doesn't need a test before she runs, that fact doesn't guarantee that she will necessarily be more amenable than she was when refusing to be loaded at Newbury last autumn. To put my mind at rest, therefore, I organised a stalls session on the Heath last Friday, which went well. Sort of. Kirsty rode her and Yarmy, Newmarket's famous stalls guru and general brahmameister, led her in. In she went, which was good, but the manner in which she did it was rather disconcerting: she entered the stalls at about the same speed that most horses leave them! From my vantage point (and Kirsty's) it appeared that the front gates took the brunt of her charge, but Yarmy seemed to think that he had done, and duly treated us to an "Oh God, oh God, she's broken my ribs" display. This was rather worrying, especially as he accompanied it with the refrain of "I've got to load the Guineas winner at the weekend, and she's broken my rib". I'd actually liked to have seen Jill go in again after that, but I felt that I might be pushing my luck if I suggested that to Yarmy just at that point, so Kirsty and I just looked at each other quizzically, shrugged our shoulders and decided that we ought to settle for quitting while we were ahead.

So that's Brief and probably Jill to keep us on our toes this week. Furthermore, we have a race to watch at Ararat (in western Victoria) on At The Races early tomorrow morning, when Miss Freelove, an Archway three-year-old half-sister to Spaceage Juliet and Stoneage Romeo (see the horse biographies section of this site) makes her debut. Then on Wednesday Somewhere Safer will be bidding for her hat-trick at the Sunshine Coast in a race whose conditions appear so suitable that one might suspect that Michael might have been allowed to write them himself. So it will be an exciting week.

Which, of course, it would be anyway, with the Guineas meeting and the Kentucky Derby this weekend. We've had Cameron Plant, an Australian friend (and part-owner of Jenny Dawson), staying for a couple of days, and he and I enjoyed a really pleasant afternoon at the Rowley Mile yesterday. We managed to lose a few quid to our favourite bookmaker Gerry Chesneaux (whose horse Whaxaar won at Great Leighs last Wednesday on, by happy coincidence, the same day that Sir Gerry had won at Ascot, which could have made a nice double if one likes to look for coincidence bets) but that didn't diminish the pleasure of the afternoon. I thought it was going to be easy when the first horse I backed (Heaven Sent, who looked far more ready than her seemingly main/only rival Passage Of Time) won easily, but Cameron knew his fate from the outset as he backed last-placed Cosmodrome in that race; well, he had to, didn't he, with that mare being trained by the father of the sheila whom all Aussies have come to idolize after the saturation media coverage of her over the past two Spring Carnivals?

Francesca had actually come on our radar on Thursday morning when Emma had an assignment to take some photographs of Curtain Call for Thoroughbred Owner And Breeder magazine. When one sees Luca's string from a distance, one can't tell who is who because all the riders wear identical kit so, especially if their goggles are down, one only has a few square inches of face to use to tell them apart. Unfortunately Emma didn't capture the incident on film as she was higher up the canter, but Gemma and I, while walking along the side of the Heath and watching Luca's horses set off up Long Hill all-weather, were treated to the sight of a bronching horse throwing his (unidentifiable from that distance) rider off. I remarked that whoever it was had very done well not to let the horse get loose, but that he or she might be wise to ride significantly longer on such a naughty horse: so imagine my amusement when we subsequently discovered that the rider had been Francesca, and that she'd explained to Emma that she actually was riding that horse with considerably longer than her usual length of stirrup because of his naughtiness!

A far less naughty horse whom we were privileged to pat on Friday was the 7-time Group One-winning Kiwi mare Seachange, who is billetted in Geoff Wragg's stable, along with her strapper Jane Ivell, whom Emma and I had met the previous evening with Larry Stratton. Cameron always seems to time his visits so well, because this meant that, with him arriving here on Friday, he got to see not only the 200th 2,000 Guineas on Saturday afternoon, but Seachange on Friday afternoon. And what a lovely mare she is. And how welcoming Jane was when she showed her to us. It would be lovely to see her win here, whether that be in the Golden Jubilee Stakes or at the July Meeting.

And as for that 200th 2,000 Guineas? What can one say other than that surely New Approach was the best horse in the race? I don't know what I can deduce about my paddock-judging skills from the result, because the two horses I thought looked the best were New Approach (second) and Stubbs Art (third at 100/1), but the horse who I thought on looks was least likely to win the race was the winner Henrythenavigator. But surely New Approach would have won if Kevin Manning had rated him a bit early, or even better if he could have tucked him in behind something for a few furlongs so that he didn't have to bear the brunt of the strong headwind for the entire mile? It was a heroic effort by a really lovely horse, especially as, against all odds, he fought back after being headed and, having looked set to be beaten a neck or more, he reduced the margin to a nose, and was in front again just after the post. I don't think one could ever see a horse run more meritoriously in the 2,000 Guineas and not win it, nor run a better Derby trial; but sadly the second part of that observation seems as academic as the first part.

One final observation before I get myself ready for a couple of hours of paying homage to such lovely horses as Natagora, Getaway and Sixties Icon: what on earth is the thinking behind Newmarket having two 7-race cards on which the big race is the third, and the chief supporting race the second? Is it just madness, or is there method in it, that method being that, with more than half the afternoon remaining after the main focus of interest has been and gone, the bars do even more business than they otherwise would have done, more racegoers get even more drunk than they otherwise would have done, and we're all happy as the racecourse's alcohol-selling division laughs all the way to the bank?