Lots of visitors this morning with two groups of winning auction prizes of a Champagne Breakfast and a morning on the gallops. Included in these groups was Lucy King, who trained another Cheltenham Hunter Chase winner in May this year and Rachel Righton, a friend of Belinda’s from school.
We also had a visit from Su and Libby Adams who are followers of the yard and kindly sent a huge delivery of cakes recently out of the blue which was much appreciated by the team. Today they came laden with amazing Crispy Creme Cakes for the team which was very generous and went down well albeit intercepted by Freddie first who ‘kindly’ offered to take them all down to the tack room! As ever, the wonderful Dave & Mary Cull were here to help in the kitchen and ensuring that everyone was fed and watered superbly. They will head to Stratford this afternoon as owners as they are part of our Racing Club who run The Kvilleken.
The Kvilleken runs in the Amateur Riders’ Hurdle race and, after a disappointing run, bounced back to some sort of form last time with an encouraging 3rd at Fontwell. Ash Hark, who works in the yard, rides him and deserves his chance so we hope The Kvilleken is on a going day!
Yesterday wasn’t our day for runners. Thady Quil didn’t jump as well as he can and ran an odd sort of race where his mistake at the 3rd seemed to lose him confidence and he dropped away only to stay on up the straight passing horses. Cottersrock was much the same and his jumping latterly let him down. He jumps well at home so we need to decide whether he would still benefit from being sent away for a few weeks for gymnastic jumping or whether it is in his head. Sporty Yankee must be in pain somewhere as he ran no sort of race so we’ll thoroughly check him over.
Happy Birthday to Freddie’s Godfather Richard Burton and also Allen Webb whose company Mangan & Webb supply us with so much of our saddlery.