There's nae stopping him....

well, the day finally came and Jock aged 82 retired on Friday after 54 years working here. I was therefore slightly surprised to hear him call up the office stairs to me at 7.15 this morning to say he couldn't find reverse in the new tractor and get it out of the shed! Speaking of the new tractor, a certain amount of research has gone into its purchase and I was delighted when it eventually arrived on Friday, the best thing is that it came with a set of overalls - although they perhaps exagerrate my rotundness somewhat I do think they will add a lot to my credibility in the neighbourhood, problem is though that everyone elses' tractors are so much bigger than my tiny little "groundcare" machine, still, got to start somewhere.

On Sunday morning we took our two most forward horses (Foodbroker Founder and Fearless Footsteps) to Lucinda Russell's gallop for a serious piece of work, partly to bring them on and partly to see exactly where we were with them. I was very pleased with the former who really perked up for an away-day and will either run on the flat at Beverley on 22nd Sept or at Perth later that week, Fearless Footsteps just failed to really let herself down on the different surface but her wind sounded good and all being well she will run in the bumper at Perth on Thursday 24th. My intention is that both of them will be ridden in their races by daughter Lucy, she has worked hard throughout her gap year and spent many months with two of the world's great trainers in Aidan O'Brien and Michael Stoute, she did well with both of them and rode work with champion jockeys past, present and future. I hope to give her lots of chances this season as I am confident she will maintain her fitness and focus whilst studying at Edinburgh University.

Much of family life is presently focussed on driving lessons and tests etc, I am afraid I couldn't conceal my delight when Mrs A sat the theory test online and failed - tee hee hee - she has been known to criticise my driving from time to time, completely unjustified of course....

We are stepping up another gear this week with a couple more horses in and looking forward to the arrival of the new assistant trainer next weekend

N

The joy...

of training the horses at this time of year usually stems from the perfect late summer days, the slight crispness to the early morning air as the sun comes up and bathes the golden stubble fields in light. The warmth quickly breaks through, the horses coats gleam and the cold wet days of winter seem a distant memory..... aha, not so today or yesterday or virtually any day this damp August. I have seldom been as soaked through as I was after first lot this morning, there was a cold easterly wind driving the rain and everywhere is completely sodden. Still, at least we were able to use the grass gallops, usually too firm at this time of year they are riding perfectly now, our half dozen most forward horses did plenty of work on them this morning though I am beginning to worry that their regime is being determined by how much the trainer can manage rather than how much the horses can manage, they have been doing a lot of hill work and are very strong when given their heads on some flatter grass. 2nd lot were jogging on the all-weather and I caught this damp but cheery(?) bunch with my camera coming down the gallop later on

They are, in front from the right, Miss Colima (Shellie Wilson), Smart Cavalier (Emma Dick), Forcefield (Lucy Alexander) and an un-named Accordion 4yo (Kit Alexander), perhaps we should call him Indian Summer.....

hello

Although we haven't had a runner since Almost Blue won at Kelso in May we have been busy, we managed to turn most of the horses away to grass whilst the stables were all disinfected and repainted, more rubber floors were installed and all the water drinkers renewed. We now have 8 horses back in work, a couple more came in from Doncaster Sales last week and with one or two other things going on we look like being up to about 18 horses in training for the winter.

With the stable expanding I have been preoccupied throughout the summer with trying to appoint our first head lad/assistant trainer, I have been looking for a proper horseman with a real depth of experience in racing gained at the highest level. I received a massive number of applicants from, thanks to the internet, all over the globe which have taken a bit of sorting out. I now have verbally agreed terms with a man that I am greatly looking forward to working with, more about him later...

He will be in charge of our core team of 3 girls, Jacqui, Emma and Shellie all whom have now been here for at least 3 years and are extremely able and dedicated to their horses. They are supported by our long-standing work rider James and old fatso here who has also resumed riding out. Our pupil assistant Douglas has left to study to be a vet at Edinburgh but is still hoping to travel the horses to the races when available.

The biggest change of all though will be the imminent retirement of Jock who aged 82 and after 54 years of continual service at Kinneston finally sidled up to me and asked would I mind if he "finished up." His long service was marked in suitable fashion at Kinross Show on Saturday when he was presented with a long service medal by the Royal Highland Agricultural Society in front of a huge crowd enjoying glorious weather, it didn't stop him being out moving haylage at 6.45am on the Sunday morning though.....

N

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.