See you Sunday

It's happened again, I'm afraid: yet again the forecast has proved misleading/incorrect.  The final band of rain (final for the time being, of course, not final final) duly passed over the country - leaving Catterick the recipient yesterday of merely half the amount of rain forecast.  The upshot is that the ground has not softened from the 'good, good to soft in places' on which we declared yesterday morning, when its softening had looked a certainty.  That remains the official report for tomorrow's meeting, so we'll be in the position we've been in with Zarosa every time we've run her this season: we had made our plans on the justifiable assumption of ground softer than good, but we'll end up running on good ground, which isn't ideal, but isn't unacceptable enough not to run.

It's a shame that the weather has been more clement than predicted, because I'd have been confident of her playing a major part in the finish had the ground been significantly on the soft side of good.  As it is, though, I'm still very hopeful of her being very competitive.  We'll see.  And the silver lining to the lack of clouds is that, as you can see, blue(ish) skies returned today, just about in time for the Newmarket Open Day on Sunday.  I say 'just about in time' and you might think that that's a funny thing to say, bearing in mind that it's forecast to be dry, sunny and 22 degrees (ie perfect conditions) for the Open Day on Sunday.  However, from the point of view of this stable, we could have done with the Indian summer having returned a day or two sooner, as we won't quite have all our muddy puddles gone by Sunday.

Anyway, that's a minor quibble, and conditions will be far, far nicer than the cold, very wet day which blighted last year's Open Day.  So I'm hopeful that it'll be a lovely event for anyone who comes along - and I hope that plenty of those who come to the Open Day will include this stable on their itineraries.  Just on the subject of the Open Day, I ought to correct a misleading impression given in yesterday's Racing Post in which John Gosden implied that opening one's stable would be contrary to the best interests of the horses and their owners.  This is not the case.  If John wants not to open his yard, that's his decision.  But he's not alone in regarding the interests of his patrons and their horses as being paramount: we all do that, and I can assure you that if it was contrary to the interests of the patrons of the stables in the town, the Open Day would not exist.  But, happily, it does exist - and I hope that it will be an event which will bring a lot of pleasure to a lot of people, and will raise a lot of money for charity too.

See you Sunday - Gus has said that he will keep his ears open for your arrival.