Monday, May 27, 2019

And then there were two

I think that I might have intimated in a recent chapter that we might have six runners this week.  I certainly had that outline plan in my head.  Predictably, we won't have six.  We'll have two.  But that's fine.  That's the way it is: when one picks out a race a few weeks in advance for a horse, it's odds-against that he or she will actually run in it.  That's why you see, say, 24 entries in a race and ten runners.  And that's with the entries only being taken six days in advance of the race; if they were taken, say, four weeks ahead (as used to be the case) you could have those nine runners coming from at least twice that number of entries.

The two who (assuming that nothing goes wrong in the interim, which can never be guaranteed) will be running are Sussex Girl at Brighton tomorrow and Sacred Sprite at Wetherby on Thursday.  Of the other four who had been pencilled in, two of the four were ruled out of contention even before the entries were made.  But that's fine.  I just decided to give Loving Pearl a bit longer than a fortnight between her first and second runs of the season, so she should run in a couple of weeks' time; and Dervish, who hasn't run for nearly two and a half years, can just wait a bit longer before receiving confirmation of the realisation which has been creeping up on him that he hasn't actually been retired.

Of the two who were entered but didn't make it as far as the declaration stage, Das Kapital was all set to be declared until the umpteenth consideration of the weather forecasts made me conclude that not enough of the rain which was hovering around various parts of the British Isles was going to make its way to Redcar in time to ease the ground as much as I'd like; and Konigin can just wait another couple of weeks before resuming from the spell which she enjoyed during the second half of the winter.  So this week we'll head to Brighton tomorrow and Wetherby on Thursday.  We'll hope for the best but expect nothing, as ever.

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