Promising

We had a very pleasing trip to Kempton last night, and not only for the fact that the weather was not nearly as grim as the forecast had suggested.  I wouldn't call it balmy, but it was considerably more clement than we had been led to expect.  As, indeed, today has been.  Tomorrow and the following few days might, of course, be another matter - but, then again, as we have been told to brace ourselves for the worst (the Lincoln odds-on to be snowed off, etc.) it could still very easily be less bad than we're expecting, and still be very unpleasant.

Anyway, enough of that.  The main reason why it was such a pleasant outing was that Gift Of Silence ran another very nice race.  Her debut had been promising, and she stepped up on that yesterday to post a decent performance, finishing third, beaten 1.25 lengths and a neck.  It was a significantly better race than has been the norm for maiden races over the winter - but, then again, yesterday was, supposedly, the theoretical first day of spring (even if it seemed more correctly the 340th day of winter, the current winter having started around the middle of last April) so it couldn't necessarily have been taken as a given that we'd have a spring-standard maiden, rather than a winter-standard maiden.

In advance, I'd highlighted the Roger Varian-trained Kohlaan as the likely favourite and likely winner, but as it turned out he neither started favourite nor won.  He did, though, look the best horse in the race, both on the form-book beforehand and assessing the race retrospectively.  I feel that if he'd been as ridden as Gift Of Silence was ridden, he'd have won - but, in fairness to his jockey, he looks a difficult ride (wore a hood, taken down early, pulled hard in the race) and also, for a horse who seemingly just wants to sprint, 1400m probably wasn't the right race for him first up after a 119-day break.  Still should have won, but.

What was unfortunate about Kohlaan receiving an eye-catchingly negative ride was the fact that he'd drifted markedly in the betting (11/10 favourite out to 6/4 second favourite) while the other obvious chance, the Jeremy Noseda-trained Hornboy, was backed from 7/4 favourite into 11/8 favourite.  There was inevitably a stewards' enquiry, which was a wise piece of window-dressing because, while only the worst conspiracy-theorists could have believed that skulduggery had been afoot, it is wise of the stewards to be seen to covering all bases.

Anyway, the winner was a Richard Hannon-trained colt called Endorsing -  by Dylan Thomas from a Darshaan mare and thus bred to excel at distances about twice yesterday's - who had shown little first time out but who had clearly improved a ton for that and who, I suspect, will probably turn out very good.  Hornboy was second.  We were third.  And Kohlaan was fourth.  So that was very promising.  The only two caveats are that, while the form is good, the time wasn't, and it would be wrong to assume that, simply because we have shown good form when very well ridden in a slowly-run and slow race, we'll be able to run the significantly quicker times that we'll need to post to do well in good races; and, secondly, I hope that our getting things right yesterday doesn't encourage the handicapper to believe that she genuinely is better than Kohlaan, and only marginally inferior to Endorsing.

So that was yesterday.  It was good to be in the first race (5.45) because, even so, that still saw us getting home at 9.00, knocking off just after 10.00 and in bed just after 11.00 - so I'd now be dead on my feet had we been in the last at 9.15.  My next outing won't be such a late one: I have an afternoon shift on At The Races tomorrow, my first of the year on the first day of the new Flat season.  So that's good.  Yesterday I went away for a few hours and came back to find a couple of these cats behaving even weirder than when I'd left (as you can see - and you can also see Gift Of Silence before and after her race yesterday, including sizing up Desert Orchid's statue as she waited for her jockey to appear) so I wonder what tomorrow will bring.