Blowy and pretty vile out there this morning – teams that work in racing yards are a hardy gang and my team still working as hard as ever and plenty of laughter too – they deserve all the treats they receive at Christmas and throughout the year – as we all know we’d not have a sport without them.
James Best, Finn Lambert and Harriet Tucker all in to ride out in the glorious December weather and we schooled quite a few too including Sarasota Star, Dreamsundermyfeet, Mozzaro, Kazontherazz, Cut And Run, She Has Notions, Brianna Rose and Ben Buie. Paul Davis in to watch schooling and back home to the warm quite quickly.
Lingfield today after passing an inspection first thing but the ground has changed to heavy so Brorson now doesn’t run and will wait for another day. Ten Past Midnight and Briezh Alko still run. Ten Past Midnight has won his last 3 races and although he won on heavy ground at Newton Abbot, I felt we ‘got away with it’ rather than he totally enjoyed it but he’ll take his chance hoping he will go in it again today. James Best rides.
Breizh Alko runs for the first time in over 900 days – he’s not been here for all that time – he has been owned by David Parry for the duration and won well for him last time he ran but was then trained by Rebecca Menzies. Rebecca decided that Breizh would be more suited by our up hill gallops so generously discussed it with David and he was transferred to us last season but another niggle saw him sidelined again. Ernesta, who looks after him and rides him out here, adores him and we are simply very excited to get him to the track. He’s had only 6 career starts and it must be unusual for a horse to be making its chasing debut in a Veteran’s Chase! A lovely big stamp of a horse – we’ve obviously not been overly tough on him at home and he will come on for the run I’m sure but he’s done plenty and we’d be thrilled to see him run a lovely race and trot up sound tomorrow. Ben Godfrey rides.