All the horses just cantering on the loop today as yesterday was work morning where most of the horses worked.
Yesterday we had a visit from Irish Thoroughbred Marketing’s CEO Charles O’Neill along with his Client Relations Manager, Eimear Grant and it was great to be able to show them around our gallops and schooling grounds and they seemed to love our facilities.
A busy day at Ludlow today made even more tricky yesterday at declarations with so many of the jockeys we use off injured and those we’d planned to use not able to ride some or all of them. Stressful and now means we have a different jockey on each of our four runners today. Not ideal but we are fortunate enough to have four top jockeys on board.
Our first runner is Back on the Lash (Richard Johnson) who won his bumper at Ludlow last season but made a bad mistake on his hurdling debut and we have spent some time getting him right again following that.
Brillare Momento then runs in a three runner chase and if she takes to fences, as she’s bred to do, then she could go very close despite looking the outsider of the three runners. She had a good jumping session with Bryony Frost last week but she’s had to go elsewhere and so Sam Twiston-Davies rides.
A big day for Ollie & Irene Ryan as all but Back on the Lash are owned by them and their second runner is Reve under Harry Skelton. Reve was unlucky not to win on his hurdling debut when falling at the 2nd last and he ran well in a much better race at Ascot last time. He got very worked up in the preliminaries at Ascot though so we are hoping he takes things much more in his stride today and think he could run a big race.
Finally Acacia Dream makes her racecourse debut in the concluding bumper. She goes nicely at home and we are hoping for a solid run from her.