This morning was the Martin Keighley Racing Club’s Christmas morning at the yard and well over half of our 50 members arrived to watch the horses on the gallops and enjoy Janne Bishop’s wonderful homemade mince pies and elderflower & apple cake too plus delicious mulled wine which smelt so good. They were lucky enough to watch an exciting string of horses doing their fast work up our Leisure Ride Carpet Gallop and were all pleased to see Viking Mistress work well as she is part of the Club and is heading for Cheltenham’s December Meeting! They are all very excited about the prospect of a Racing Club horse running at the home of Jump Racing and, with renewals due on 1st January, if you like the idea of joining our club and pay your £500 subscription in the next 10 days then you will go into the ballot to join them in Cheltenham’s famous Paddock. What a Christmas present that could be for someone!
As well as looking around the yard, talking to the team and having a good look at our fabulous new horse box which everyone loved, David & Mary Cull who are part of the club but an even bigger part of our team here, looked after everyone so well in our Owners’ Room where they could watch the horses warm up on our Carpet Loop. Some got into the Christmas spirit by wearing Christmas Jumpers and they all had a photo by the Christmas Tree in the Owners’ Room – decorated thanks to Freddie & Harry! A brilliant morning for them all.
We had plenty of owners in too – Chris & Jo Massey were in with their family and were delighted with their young horse Mister Valentine who is due out in the next month and our Chairman Jon Hughes and wife Jack were here watching their horses too. I mentioned that Janne Bishop cooked for us and, along with Mary Cull, looked after everyone so well and also husband David parked the cars – but their highlight was seeing the new Cheltenham Winners’ Board which Chris Stock’s Finnick Group produced for us and delivered yesterday, put up at evening stables yesterday – their lovely Bobble Emerald now features on it following his Cheltenham win in October! It’s very impressive with 19 winners up there now – 2 spaces – imagine if we could fill them before the end of 2017 – what a dream that would be! We all love Cheltenham here – the team, the horses, so we are all systems go to go for it!