A quiet few days with no runners but still busy enough at home with youngsters in and a few coming back in from their summer holidays.
Last week was Racing Staff Week and a week to celebrate how hard they all work and how our industry simply couldn’t exist without the hard backroom staff. However both Issy and Kieran had their special days with both of them having their first race rides in Charity races restricted to stable staff.
I mentioned how much Issy enjoyed her ride on Jazzy and Kieran thoroughly enjoyed his too in front of plenty of family and friends at Doncaster. Sadly The Kvilleken was always going to struggle over 7 furlongs however Kieran rode to orders trying to make the running and, when The Kvilleken found the pace too quick, Kieran never stopped pushing and at the end wasn’t that far away from the leaders. He had obviously been working hard on his fitness as he The Kvilleken wasn’t able to help him out at all as he was flat out all the way but well done to Kieran. Both Kieran and Issy looked very tidy and I was proud of them both and glad to support the initiative. Thanks to the owners for allowing them to ride their horses.
An early start today so thanks for the team for coming in early to get one lot out before taking some of the youngsters off galloping to help with their education. Not very romantic for my 19th Wedding Anniversary however both Belinda & I were too busy to remember what day it was 1st thing – it rained 19 years ago too and they all said it was good luck … well we’re still going!
Tuesday is the day that ‘the Handicapper’ is often mentioned as it’s the day we all find out whether our horses have been raised, dropped or stayed the same. We ‘only’ have one change today – however it’s a huge change and a little frustrating too. Thady Quil, who has tested our patience to the max and gone through 3 wind operations and had various other problems, some niggly but problems none the less, won at Worcester last week. His original partnership of 6 have more patience than I have ever seen before and a lot of this is down to the skill of management from Jon & Jack Hughes who run the Owners for Owners partnerships. Throughout the problems they have kept every single owner involved in every decision and communicated regularly after blood tests, scopes, overground scopes, etc etc etc. I am convinced 95% of other partnerships would have fallen apart over a year ago.
They all love Thady and have kept the faith until just recently when three of them understandably decided enough was enough. Three members remained as they had decided to give him until the end of the summer having come so far. At Worcester last Wednesday they were rewarded with a fantastic win which surprised us all.
I am still in shock that Thady Quil won by 12 lengths and 20 lengths but the race fell apart and he loved the ground, was given a superb ride by Andrew Tinkler and it was his day in the sun.
However…..today we see that Thady has been raised 15lbs over fences by the Handicapper! Wow. The Handicapper must think now he’s realised how to win that he’s improved a lot and will go on and is maybe worried about him running up a sequence of wins if he doesn’t put him up a considerable amount. It’s a massive hike and I hope I’m proved wrong as when a horse takes so long to win and then eventually does I do think it’s harsh to raise them so much. Has he suddenly improved 15lbs over fences? It will be fantastic if he is right!