Perth

Well, the sun shone for two days of good racing at Perth with a big crowd yesterday but sadly we have a return to February style conditions today, grim indeed. Things got off to a poor start for us at Perth on Wednesday evening with Amulree becoming worked up in the preliminaries before running with the choke out for a mile prior to weakening rapidly. Its very difficult to assess a horse properly when they behave like that but nevertheless it was disappointing. Smart Cavalier ran an allright sort of race and we learnt a bit more about him in his first handicap for us, likewise Foodbroker Founder who travelled and jumped well prior to being anchored by his top weight when the quickened for home. Yesterday Almost Blue put up a good effort to finish 3rd in his first race on the racecourse proper, he was always going to find 2m4f on the sharp side on quick ground round Perth but he ran well and would have been closer had he not clouted the second last. Sadly the ground had dried out too much to let Fearless Footsteps take her chance in the last.

With the weather remaining unsettled we will keep 5 horses on the go for another couple of weeks, running them wherever we can (Kelso on Wednesday I hope) before they join their friends out at grass.

Brrr

Hello

After an all too brief glimpse of spring the weather has been grim this week and this morning was just about the first time all winter that I had to delay first lot and put the horses on the walker whilst a storm abated - winter? - apparently it's May and needless to say I have already turned half a dozen horses out - they may need to come in again at this rate and plans to turn more out are now on hold.

Weather conditions were not dissimilar when we made our first ever raid on a Yorkshire area point-to-point earlier this week on Bank Holiday Monday, a long way it was too to Witton Castle but we were almost rewarded with a winner when Almost Blue came with a strong late run to finish 2nd in the Intermediate race, another 50 yards and I think he would have nailed the winner but it was great to see him continue in such good heart in what was I think his 7th run in 10 weeks. Foodbroker Founder then took little interest in the Ladies Open, finally dumping Lucy on the ground at the 3rd last - a completely different horse from the one that turned up 9 days earlier to win at Fife, most puzzling. The day before we had also been travelling with Contendo finishing 4th of 14 at the Lauderdale and Torche finishing down the field, retirement beckons for the latter.

This weekend we will have soft ground for the first time for a while and needless to say it is the wrong horses that are ready to run, nevertheless Smart Cavalier will probably take the long and winding road to Aspatria in Cumbria tomorrow and hopefully the ease in the ground will enable us to have a handful of runners at Perth next week - Wednesday evening and Thursday afternoon, it's meant to be spring but wrap up well.

So the stockmarket is up again this morning and has risen 10 out of the last 12 trading sessions, the man on Radio 4 tells me we are back in a bull market, hmmm, it would be nice to think so but we are only back where we were on the 1st of January and at that stage the market had risen by a similar percentage since the gloom of early November, I don't remember many people calling a bull market then. The uniformity of the optimism emanating from financial commentators is now almost as deafening as the doom they were forecasting when the market was 25% lower two months ago which does make me nervous, however at least now we have had a "double bottom" and the mood in the media is greatly changed, however much one resents the media one cannot deny (unfortunately) the power it holds over the national psyche.... fingers crossed......

N

Happy days....

Mrs A seemed very pleased to make off with her loot after her horse Foodbroker Founder won the Ladies Open under daughter Lucy at the Fife point-to-point on Saturday. It has taken us a little bit of time to work out this quirky little horse and he came from well off the pace to win cleverly; having lain for dead at the last fence in the same race last year it was a huge relief that he finally came good and particularly pleasing that he did so at our local track. This horse that was engaged in the 2003 Derby has a little bit of history, trained by David Elsworth he won on the flat, was beaten a short head at Royal Ascot, became Desert Orchid's travelling companion and soul-mate, won a couple over hurdles and the last jockey to sit on him prior to Lucy was AP McCoy.... hopefully he can progress from here on the pointing circuit but we also fancy giving him a couple of spins on the flat through the summer.



Earlier in the afternoon Almost Blue was a comfortable winner in the Members Race, brother Jamie recording his 7th (a record surely?) win in the race in a match against his niece Lucy riding for the Normile stable.


It was a good afternoon's racing in glorious sunshine and much needed having withdrawn our horses at Perth due to the ground being a little bit quick. We did manage to give a couple of promising youngsters a racecourse gallop on Friday evening but the ground frustrations continue this week with Amulree and Fearless Footsteps having to bypass their intended engagements at Kelso this evening. I am sure it will rain sometime but probably not until I have finally thrown in the towel and turned the horses out for a summer break.



Last Saturday represented the formal end of the 2008/9 National Hunt Season. Reflecting on our stats I see that we had 4 winners & 6 seconds from 51 runners. All the winners came in the pointing field and thank goodness for that as we had very little luck on the track with several horses going wrong and some of them not being quite right in the middle of the winter. Whilst it is undeniably easier to win in point-to-points with an ordinary sort of horse, it is still very competitive and you have to be fit, healthy and lucky. The problem on the track is that until you get into handicaps you are generally competing against some very expensive horses and, with us, our handicappers either went wrong or just weren't up for it.



The great thing about racing is one is always looking forward and we have some very nice young horses to look forward to next season and a few old favourites coming back from injury so we will hopefully make a bit more of an impact on the track this time round.



I say "next" season but it has of course already started and we intend to be in action on Sunday at the Lauderdale point-to-point, as mentioned we have bypassed Kelso today but we have other options at Hexham on Saturday evening and Witton Castle (wherever that is) on Bank Holiday Monday - it would be highly satisfactory if we could start off where we finished, with winners!

N

back into action...

...it will be 3 weeks since we had a runner when we finally swing back into action this weekend, frustrating when we have 7 horses primed and ready to go but it has been astonishingly dry and as a result the ground has been very firm. All being well the watering will have done its job though this weekend at Corbridge; Almost Blue and Foodbroker Founder will hopefully line up on Sunday afternoon, both are in great form and put up career best efforts last time out so fingers crossed, thereafter we have 3 nice horses to run at the Perth Festival next week where I am sure there will be nice ground.

With an absence of racing opportunities I took the opportunity to nip over to my beloved Murren for a couple of days skiing in the week running up to Easter; the advantages of being fairly stout came into play when I collided with an unfortunate Mancunian at full speed on part of the famous "Inferno" run, whilst we both had the wipeout of a lifetime and I am still nursing a sore shoulder he was rather more immediately inconvenienced by regurgitating on impact the spinach soup he had just had for lunch which upset him somewhat, fortunately my "bratwurst mit katoffelsalat" was rather more solid and remained in situ.

We were in need of a diversion with Northern Dusk having to be euthanased during Aintree week. Apart from the pain of losing a lovely horse that had become a real friend it is a major strategic blow to a small yard like ours.

In the summer of 07 a very good friend had indicated that she would like a share in a good long term National Hunt prospect and with a decent budget in hand we headed off to Doncaster Sales, we drew a blank and then headed to the Newmarket Horses in Training Sales where we again drew a blank. By this time we had the irrascible Irish bloodstock agent, Gerry Griffin, in tow and he set about finding us something privately in Ireland. I was laid up with my broken hip when he called having found this good prospect down in Co Wexford, unable to travel we had to take his word for it and in early December he arrived at Kinneston. He wasn't the most impressive horse when I first saw him and having only just been backed he had a few behavioural issues as well and he was clearly going to need a bit of time.

We gave him just that and over the next fifteen months he gradually learnt his job, stopped galloping like a kangaroo and overcame his phobia of being near other horses. What was really exciting about him though was his acceleration, the first time we asked him to quicken I was left with my mouth hanging open and after that every time we gave him a little squeeze to see what would happen the power that he showed would literally make the hairs on the back of my neck stand up; he kept me awake at night. As well as that he grew into himself, developing a self-belief that translated itself into his whole demeanour - he knew he was good.

After one or two false starts we eventually arrived at the racecourse on Friday 20th March this year and trainer was definitely nervous, I didn't expect him to win as I knew there was plenty still to work on, he would be green and there would be limitless improvement to come. He ran a brilliant race but faded slightly in the closing stages and as soon as he eased up I could see there was a problem. The rest, as they say, is history, but he was well looked after in Hospital and seemed content when I visited him. Having initially diagnosed a fractured pastern further investigation revealed multiple fractures in his knee, at the end of the day his legs weren't strong enough for his heart and I am afraid to say that to succeed as a good racehorse they need to be. It is disappointing for me and a big blow for the owners but most of all I feel for all those in the yard here that looked after him so well and turned him from the slightly plain nervous animal that came off the lorry from Ireland into a good-looking racehorse with real presence and talent.

Sometime around this time last year Kit decided he would like to emulate his elder sister and do a bit of race-riding. It wasn't exactly the news Mrs A and I wanted to hear but we managed to send Lucy out on a winner first time (just) so we set about finding him a decent horse. By August we hoped we had the right one in the form of Commercial Express, a reasonably experienced steeplechaser that had normally been ridden by Kit's favourite jockey, Timmy Murphy. We almost had it ready to run in January when it started to suffer a series of minor setbacks which basically kept it off work for a month; despite the interruptions we thought we had it ready so took it to the Lanark point-to-point on Saturday.

After all the waiting... the anxious connections...

on board at last...

Sent off at an unfancied 6-1, Kit's instructions were to "ride him like Timmy" ie wait out the back and come with a late run. He carried out the instructions to perfection (almost) in that he waited, waited, waited and came with a tearing run round the home bend, over the last two and just failed by a head to nail the even-money favourite. One bookmaker in particular was most relieved (having given the connections 10-1) and a head seemed so desperately close to pulling it off after a year of plotting but it was a wonderful first run, problem is I think he wants to have another go.....

2nd was going to be the theme of the weekend as we headed to Alnwick on Sunday where brother Jamie on Almost Blue was just pipped by top amateur Tom Greenall on an odds-on favourite, going down by a neck in a driving finish and then Lucy on Foodbroker Founder was beaten into 2nd by another southern raider in the Ladies Open.

Considering "Foodie" failed to complete last season this was good progress but that's five 2nds this month from 12 runners..... talk about hitting the crossbar!

I am glad the horses ran well over the weekend because I started Saturday morning in very poor shape having finished up late on Friday evening at the Large Animal Hospital near Edinburgh after our promising youngster Northern Dusk injured himself seriously on the run-in in the last race at Kelso. This horse has been the apple of my eye through what has been a long and sometimes difficult winter, seeing him quicken up on the gallops never failed to set my heart racing and I was pretty certain I might finally have found a decent horse to take us somewhere. Everything he did on the day confirmed my hopes, he looked really striking, had poise, presence and was completely relaxed. He was an utter professional during the race and was just coming to mount his challenge on the run-in when his stride faltered slightly and he appeared to be running on empty, he still finished 6th but pulled up very lame and was taken off the course by horse ambulance prior to being transferred to the LAH where x-rays diagnosed a fractured pastern. A full recovery is possible but not certain and it was a bitter blow that having been so patient he should be injured on his racecourse debut, there was heaps of improvement to come and I just hope we can get him back to fulfil his potential for his loyal owners. Earlier in the afternoon Miss Colima ran a poor race in the staying handicap hurdle, she was a bit stiff afterwards and may not have liked the ground, I will turn every stone to make sure there is no underlying problem. On Thursday at Ayr Whispering Moor put up a lacklustre effort despite looking well, he just doesn't seem to want to get competitive.

A real roller-coaster of a weekend and it doesn't seem to stop as we run Smart Cavalier in the 5pm at Sedgefield tomorrow with brother Jamie on top, the ground will be fast and 14 run, if he can repeat his good 2nd at Kelso last time out he should go close.

I think I'll be lying in a dark room somewhere...

Whispering Moor...

....waits to go onto the lorry prior to heading off to Ayr this morning

This week...

After what has seemed like an interminably long winter the sudden arrival of spring is most welcome in many respects, it is a joy to go out in the mornings, the farm is busy and there is a tremendous lustre in the horses' coats. It does mean that conditions on the tracks are drying up very fast and we hope to have a busy weekend, starting tomorrow at Ayr when Whispering Moor is going to run in the 2.20, only 6 run, James Halliday rides, the ground will be soft still and we are just hoping that he shows us some enthusiasm. On Friday we head to Kelso where the ground will be good, we hope to run Miss Colima in the 3.25 with Fearghal Davies on board and Northern Dusk in the 5.40 with Peter Buchanan. Saturday sees us at the Lanark point-point where we hope our elder son Kit will have his first ride on board Commercial Express, Lucy should be in action on Foodbroker Founder and possibly Contendo whilst Jamie looks like waiting till Sunday at Alnwick where Almost Blue should have a good chance.

I am pleased to report that last weekend was much less eventful than the previous one with Almost Blue finishing a good 3rd of 14 in the Restricted race and Seeking Power 3rd of 14 in the maiden, sent of favourite he was only beaten 3l by the winner and would have gone very close had he not blundered badly at the 4th last. After a winter when we really struggled to get into the money it has been heartening that over the last month 6 of our 11 runners have been placed, including a winner and two 2nds - long may it continue!

N