Yesterday once more

Another week, another round of entries.  Two entrants last week, two runners: both Hope Is High and Das Kapital ran adequately to finish midfield at Newmarket's Thursday evening meeting on the Rowley Mile.  This week we have three entrants and I hope that all three will run.  If you just read the Racing Post's (or anyone else's) list of entries, you'd think that we only had two entrants: Kryptos and Hope Is High at Chester on Saturday.  Hope isn't certain to get in, but I hope that both will run, ridden by Nicola.  Not that you'd know it, but we do, though, have another entry: Roy in the Air Ambulance Charity Race at Warwick tomorrow.  That will be a special occasion.

The background to this runner goes back a long way.  The win which gave me the confidence to have a stab at training was when Witchway North, trained in this stable by Hugh Collingridge, gave me my first winner as an owner when taking a selling hurdle at Fontwell at 50/1 in February 1994.  I was working for Mr Yong Nam Sen at Wood Ditton Stud at the time and used to ride the filly out every morning before going to work.  That was a wonderful day, a heart-stoppingly exciting moment as she overhauled the Martin Pipe-trained, Richard Dunwoody-ridden 5/4 favourite in the dying strides on her National Hunt debut, having shown nothing on the Flat.

She was ridden that day by my friend Vince Smith, who used to ride Flat and National Hunt.  Vince rode around 250 winners, probably more than half of them in Jersey where he was champion jockey many times.  He rode me another 50/1 winner in 1997 when Supreme Illusion, whom I both owned and trained, won a claiming hurdle at Plumpton.  He retired from race-riding early this century and then trained for a few years, saddling a Group winner when Blitzkrieg beat Dylan Thomas in the Autumn Stakes (run at Salisbury as Ascot was being re-built) in 2005.

Vince is now Victoria.  When I found out that Victoria, having ridden all those winners as a man, hoped to have the chance to try to ride a winner as a woman, I contacted her to say that I would love to help if I could.  The upshot is that we're heading to Warwick tomorrow.  Victoria is a year older than I am so taking out a professional jockey's license again after such a long absence wasn't a realistic option, so a charity race is the obvious way forward.  Happily and unsurprisingly, Roy's owner Larry McCarthy is very much on board for this project, so let's hope for a very happy day tomorrow.

I don't want to labour the point, but it's probably worth adding a final couple of paragraphs to this chapter by saying that one very pleasing aspect of Vicky's transition is how well she has been accepted by those around her in the racing world - much more so, apparently, than is generally the case for transgender people in pretty much any other environment or walk of life.  For me there was no decision to take: when you have known, liked and respected a friend for as long as I have in this case, it would need a lot more than this to make me change my opinion of the person (murder, maybe; or dropping litter; or just anything illegal or anything which does harm to others.  But not something as inoffensive as this).

Happily this seems to have been the case for most of Vicky's friends and acquaintances, which is very pleasing as we're always told that the racing world isn't a very tolerant, caring or liberal one.  This suggests that the general impression is not a correct one.  I suppose this whole thing goes back to one of my basic philosophies of how to live life: never be ashamed to admit that one is a human being.  We're not robots. We're human beings, and being human is normal.  Being human means having feelings and emotions.  Refusing to admit, to oneself and to others, that one feels the way one does, that one is a human and not a robot, because feels that society would expect one not to feel that way is rarely the way forward.  I am at least as proud to call Vicky a friend as I was formerly proud to say the same about Vince.