Plans in a cold climate

Best laid plans ... We started off OK with Das Kapital running at Yarmouth on Tuesday, as hoped.  He found (most of) his opponents too fast, but that's understandable as several of them look to have the makings of smart milers, in particular the winner Without Parole who is clearly a very high-class horse and who ran a startlingly good time.  The fast ground made it harder still for him, but all told it was a pleasing debut as he coped with things very well before, during and after the race; and more time and more distance should see him progressing from there.

Since then, though, we look to be finding ourselves deviating from the script more than I'd like.  With the weather becoming so dreadful again, the ground will be right (ie wet) for Kryptos at Leicester tomorrow, but the horse isn't quite ready to run, so disappointingly I concluded that I should not declare him.  He isn't too far away from being ready to resume, though, so perhaps we might be able to give him the go-ahead to run at Wetherby a week tomorrow.  Hope Is High, on the other hand, definitely is ready to resume - but very wet ground isn't what we want, so I feel that it's almost certain that she too will miss her intended reappearance (at Salisbury on Monday).

When we entered for Salisbury the ground was good to soft, soft in places.  That would be OK, although I'd rather have good to soft (or good).  But I'd run on soft.  However, it had already deteriorated to soft, heavy in places by this morning; and there is another band of heavy rain forecast to come in for Sunday and Monday  So it's safe to assume that it'll be heavy ground - and that would make it an easy decision for us not to run.  But I hope that Parek (Sussex Girl) would be able to run at Brighton on Tuesday.  She wouldn't want heavy ground; but it's unlikely to be that, even with the further heavy rain set move in up from the Channel, Sunday into Monday.

I'd like to think that we'd be going back to Brighton on Wednesday with Roy.  The only fly in the ointment is that the race has a reasonably large entry.  There are 29 horses entered and he'll be 27th in order to get in, with the maximum being 14.  So we may or may not get in.  I'd put it about 50:50.  It would be rare to be eliminated from a mile-and-a-half race at Brighton as small fields are generally par for the course for all races there bar the sprints, but it could happen.  At least with 48-hour, rather than 24-hour, declarations one finds out in good time whether or not one has got a run.  Anyway, of the four runners planned for the end of this week and first half of next, it's looking as if we'll have either one or two runners.