Off to Windsor

It's now a bright, sunny Sunday morning and I'm sitting at my desk with Natagora on my lap. I've got plenty to do before we head off to Windsor mid-morning, including riding out, but I've just wasted a bit of time in making further contributions to the comments' section of an earlier chapter regarding tarriffs, so now I'll waste a bit more time with a new chapter. The reason for today's trip to Windsor will be to run First Pressing (pictured in the field a couple of weeks ago). She should run well, but it's hard to be too adamant on that as she's jumping straight from five furlongs to ten, so it really is a shot in the dark. As she's by Bertolini from a mare by Last Tycoon, the obvious initial conclusion was that she would be ideally suited by short races, hence her first three starts (two last year, one this) coming at five furlongs. However, after her first start this year it was clear that she would want considerably farther, so I started to start training her a bit differently (ie for longer distances) and looking for races around a mile. As one doesn't get a huge amount of suitable races for any particular horse, it transpired that the least unsuitable option was over ten furlongs rather than a mile. So we'll give it a go and see what happens. She is still only very lightly-raced and inexperienced so she needs racing practice anyway, so we'll have a worthwhile outing come what may: either she'll run well, or she won't but we'll have learnt something and she'll have learnt something too. And Hannah (pictured here on the same filly, leaving the stalls earlier in the year) should learn something too as she'll be riding, which is nice.

So that's on today's agenda. Yesterday was a quiet but satisfactory day; very warm but largely overcast, disappointingly - even if the weather was considerably nicer than this photograph of some of Henry Cecil's horses working up the Limekilns at approximately 9am might seem to imply. It's still fast ground on the Heath, but it's what one might describe as good fast ground at present after the large quantities of rainfall which we have had over the past couple of weeks, so most stables, including this one, at present would be making more use of the grass canters and gallops than would usually be the case in the height of summer. The one which we have been using principally has been Side Hill grass, when we'd expect only to be using the AW there in August. As regards the exercises yesterday of the horses who are here, probably the most notable was that all the four two-year-olds are starting to go a bit faster occasionally, and yesterday all four did an unpressured gallop up the all-weather strip on Warren Hill. All seems to be going very straightforwardly with all of them, none of them having had any sort of significant set-back (so far!) at any stage. And as you can see from the relaxed way in which all four filies (and riders) are walking back down again afterwards, all had clearly taken the work well in their stride. Let's hope that things continue that way!