Off the mark

I was indeed very pleased to get to the end of yesterday, not least because we'd had a winner by that time.  In fact, I still wasn't home when the day ended, as Sussex Girl, Jana and I got home from Nottingham shortly after midnight, and Sacred Sprite and Ivona (along with Nick Littmoden's runner and his assistant Barry Denvir who very kindly saddled and oversaw the filly for me) arrived about five minutes after we did.  Jana and I had a fruitless trip to Nottingham, but Ivona was bringing home a winner so it was very easy to shrug of the heavy rain which had reached Newmarket by that time.  When I finally got back in the house, soaking wet, at around 1.15, I was a very happy man.

Sussex Girl's run was a non-event.  We had had an hour of heavy rain at Nottingham earlier in the evening and the track was very soft, and I didn't really want her to go right to the back of the field in heavy ground (on which it is often hard to come from too far off the pace).  But she needs to be buried away as she's too keen otherwise, and unfortunately she jumped so smartly that, from her wide draw with nothing coming across in front of her, she just saw too much daylight, raced too freely and inevitably weakened out.  And when you're racing on ground that is borderline heavy, weakening out means weakening right out.  But no lives were lost, so that's OK.  She can fight another day.

With Sacred Sprite, though, everything went well.  She isn't very fast but she stays well, so stepping up beyond a mile and a half (which you can't do until you graduate to handicaps) was always going to help.  And, more pertinently, dropping from running up against Listed-class horses such as Verdana Blue and Gumball in novice races to running in a Class Six handicap off a rating of 54 was clearly going to give her a decent chance.  Even so, there are always plenty of horses who go through their maidens satisfactorily enough, start out in handicaps with their connections thinking that their prospects are rosy - and end up never winning a race.  Thankfully, she is not in that category, having won her first handicap yesterday.

So that was very happy.  And doubly so for the fact that it was the first winner owned in Europe by Dato Yap's Raffles Farm in New Zealand, who also bred the filly, having bought her dam Lively Sprite (in foal to Nathaniel, ie carrying this filly) at the December Sale in 2014.  Several Group One winners in Australasia, most notably Sacred Falls, have carried the Raffles silks to victory, while they have also raced some very good horses in Asia.  They have a rich history, and it was an honour to help in writing a small chapter in that history by sending out their first winner in Europe.  Let's hope that we can add to that tally in the coming months - obviously one hopes that Sacred Sprite, having raced only four times, might be open to further progress; and we have Konigin, a very nice filly, for them here too - but, whatever happens, yesterday was very special.  Whatever does or does not follow, the first win is always a very special one.