What a busy weekend at Cheltenham with over 120 visitors to the yard on Friday and Saturday mornings with two large groups – Hot To Trot Jumping and The Racegoers Club both thoroughly enjoying themselves. So many messages of thanks which are all appreciated.
Mr Mafia found the pace too quick yesterday but still ran a solid race and deserved to be there having run so consistently over the summer. Lots of head scratching after Buckle Street’s failure to start on Saturday – he won’t lead the string down the gallops at home but never stops and will happily lead cantering, work and over fences and hurdles so it’s very frustrating for all connections.
Such a great meeting though and fantastic to meet up with so many friends over the three days of superb racing. What a show Cheltenham put on too – quite brilliant.
Our youngest son Harry was a rare absentee for a weekend Cheltenham raceday yesterday (especially as Mr Mafia is one of his favourite horses) but he had a day to remember at Wembley with his football team – Northleach Under 9s – as they were there to watch England beat Croatia 2-1. He was absolutely buzzing when he arrived home last night and rightly so, an experience he’ll never forget I’m sure and thanks to all involved for organising and looking after them so well.
A normal busy Monday with us this morning – no runners but physio Maggie Turner and Farrier Nick Partridge in plus the added frustration of no internet as Gigaclear has a major fault somewhere and a few of the local villages are also out. Thanks to Maggie Turner for allowing us some office space with working internet! We just don’t realise how much we rely on it from replying to lots of emails to entries and declarations which are now all online.