Little Glenshee

Little Glenshee

Glorious spring sunshine, busy morning on the gallops but basically a quiet weekend, almost a relief to climb off the rollercoaster. A marvellous week at Perth who put on a first class festival despite the elements and yesterday Little Glenshee ran well above expectations to finish 2nd, elation, then half an hour later Tipsy Dara came down at the first in the Highland National after jumping in to the back of another horse, Lucy received a nasty kick and was "stood down" for the rest of the afternoon, she then missed a winner on Rossini's Dancer who provided a fairytale end to the Festival for Susan Bradburne, perfect (well very nearly perfect!) and tremendous scenes in the Winner's enclosure celebrating a marvellous career, what a day and what a week!

Tipsy Dara, Mark Fleming (minus mud!) and Kelly

A chance to relax this afternoon and enjoy the racing from Sandown and an astonishing display from Tidal Bay, cantering home with top weight in the race that will always be known to me as "The Whitbread," he has been one of my favourite horses for a few years as one of the best sons of Flemensfirth, a stallion that produces the toughest of progeny. I had the fun of watching two of his sons in the field this morning, one yearling out of a sister to a Gold Cup winner and another a half brother to Buffalo Ballet et al. Plenty to look forward to and as the curtain comes down on the 2011-12 season one's mind is immediately drawn to the future, on Monday we will be riding the 3yo's again that were broken last summer, they will be ridden round the farm for a couple of weeks then turned away for the summer prior to coming in to training in August. We will be starting to back off a few of the horses in training but we look like having a busy start to the new season with 17 different horses to run in May all being well, starting at Kelso on Wednesday evening..........

Tipsy Dara struggles to her feet, Lucy receives a proper kick.

By the way, vile commerce, I hardly dare mention it,  but many of these attractive young horses are for sale and should provide bags of fun......... these photographs courtesy of Frank Cornfield and to finish the season - a caption competition..........