Ups and downs

It's been a busy week. It's seven days since I last posted, and the time has flown by. I did indeed enjoy the trip to Carlisle - well, to be more precise, I enjoyed parts of the trip. The journey was a treat: up via the really special Cumbrian section of the M6 over Shap, and home via the splendid Penrith to Scotch Corner road, which was given added spice by the presence of numerous travelling men who were gathering with their ponies/horses for this week's Appleby Fair. On what was just about a perfect summer's day, those two journeys were very special. Many aspects of the afternoon at the races were very pleasant too, particularly the opportunity to salute numerous northern racing identities whom we don't see so often nowadays as we don't have so many faraway runners. What was also nice was to received confirmation that Ethics Girl is a decent filly, and a very brave one too. It was just rather frustrating to be in that rare position of finishing eleven lengths in front of the third and yet not winning the race, failing by a head against the favourite, who had stood out in the paddock as definitely the (only) one to beat. I think that it is fair to say that the favourite had the run of the race, which made our filly's effort all the more creditable - and the narrow defeat all the more frustrating. So, on an otherwise idyllic day, the fact that dear little Ethics Girl had to work very hard for a 'so near and yet so far' result was the one irritation of an otherwise very enjoyable trip.

Last weekend also contained some enjoyable aspects. Saturday had started excitingly. I was riding out slightly earlier than normal (at 6.00) and this led, quite by chance, to my having an early look at Scenic Blast as he tasted Newmarket Heath for the first time. It was a pleasure to bid him and his trainer Danny Morton 'Welcome to Newmarket' and to have a close inspection of this splendid big horse, and then a good view of him cantering slowly away from us up Long Hill in the morning sunshine. One couldn't have asked for a more special way to start a lovely summer's day. That was one memorable aspect of the day, and another came a few hours later when Emma and I took part in Newmarket's Litter Picking Day. This was not an onerous task, and in fact wasn't for me an abnormal event as I find picking up an armful of litter in Exeter Road an almost daily event. I hate litter, so was only too happy to stand up and be counted on what was as much a symbolic gesture as a meaningful method of making the town less filthy. The Town Council is to be commended on its current campaign to highlight the litter problem and to try to make people conscious of the desirability of not contributing to it, and last Saturday's little exercise must surely be regarded as a good thing.

This week will, I am sure, end tomorrow with a really good Derby, but sadly it will also be remembered as the week in which the greatest trainer of our lifetime, Vincent O'Brien, passed away at the age of 92. The Racing Post, predictably, did him justice, providing pages of tributes, with Brough Scott's articles being particularly memorable. As this week's editions of the Post have also contained some of the late Clement Freud's gems, there has been plenty of good reading. Another lovely post-script to the life of Vincent O'Brien was Claire Balding's interview on the BBC today with his son-in-law John Magnier, which was a real pleasure to see/hear. I don't think I'd ever previously seen John Magnier interviewed on television, which made his fulsome apprecation of his father-in-law and mentor all the more moving.

Less impressive was the Racing Post's misinformation that the funeral of Vince Bray was to be conducted today at 12.30 in St. Mary's Church. Vince, tragically, appears to have taken his own life last week. A conscientious and professional racing lad, Vince had worked for numerous trainers over the years, including in recent seasons Mark Tompkins and Michael Bell, as well as in one of the Darley pre-training yards on Hamilton Hill. It is pointless to speculate what prompted his brain to lead him to the conclusion that life had no more to offer him, but whatever it was has left the world short of a good man, and that is just very, very sad. I would have liked to have paid my respects to him at his funeral, but sadly, having read in the Post that the service would take place at 12.30, I found myself in the very embarrassing position of walking through a disconcertingly unpopulated St. Mary's church-yard at 12.28, only to see the doors of the church open in front of me and a coffin, followed by grieving mourners, start to be carried out towards me, the service clearly having just finished.

Vince, sadly, is merely one good person lost to the local racing community in recent days. Yesterday ended with the very sad news that Amanda Bullard had lost her long and brave fight against cancer. Amanda's husband Sam could be described as the acceptable face of the bloodstock 'industry' because he personifies decency and integrity in a profession which attracts more than its fair share of rogues; he is also the head of a family widely recognised as being as nice and decent as he is, and this cruel outcome is, sadly, the latest example of the quirk of fate which seems so often to decree that ill luck be visited on some of the people who least deserve it.

On a happier note, good fortune has today favoured several very deserving people. It was very nice to see the entire team around Sariska enjoying her good win in the Oaks and that has to be marked down as a Classic triumph for the right people. What, though, made the day particularly pleasing for me was that two of the genuinely good and generally unsung members of the weighing room - Mickey Fenton and Jerry O'Dwyer - were able to ride into the famous Epsom winner's circle on Oaks Day after big races, having won, respectively, the Group Three Diomed Stakes on Mac Love and the Listed Surrey Stakes on Ocean's Minstrel. Neither jockey could be regarded as generally over-rewarded, so both results were ones which I greatly welcomed. Micky has been having some great results recently - one particularly good day came last month when he drove to Hamilton for two rides at a Friday evening meeting, and was rewarded with two win, in a Listed race for Michael Bell and on a 20/1 shot in a maiden - and I am delighted to see it. Of today's two winners Mac Love is a thoroughly admirable old horse who is currently being kept in remarkably good form by Steff Liddiard, while it is really nice to see John Ryan handling (and handling extremely well) a good horse. Look Busy, recent brave victrix of the Group Two Temple Stakes, is a wonderful reminder that in many cases a small stable and unfashionable jockey need only a good horse to prove that they can get the job done; and Ocean' Minstrel is, happily for John and Jerry, providing a similar illustration.