Windy here this morning and, after a bit of rain yesterday I was up at 5am to continue watering our schooling ground as we had planned to school this morning and were forecast more rain than we got. Fortunately this morning’s watering was enough to get the going spot-on and we were able to school.
We schooled Somewhere To Be, Oscar World and also schooled Mister Valentine, who is due to run on Tuesday, Chequered View, who also runs on Tuesday and Buckle Street who runs on Wednesday. A good morning.
Two runners today at Fontwell. Lord Condi makes his hurdling debut under Aidan Coleman, who gets on well with him and was in the saddle when he won his bumper at Fontwell. I don’t think he was 100% when he ran at Worcester last time as Aidan said he felt the winner all day long but when he asked for his effort he found nothing – that’s not him and we hope for a bold show today.
Miss Antipova makes her racecourse debut in the bumper for our local Batsford Stud who obviously bred her. A lovely looking mare who has come to hand much earlier than we thought she would when we first saw her at Martin Jones’ Redmarley yard being broken in. Her future definitely lies over obstacles which is what she’s bred to do but it’s great to get some racecourse experience into her and we hope she runs a nice race.
The countdown continues to our Owners’ Day next Sunday and another gentle reminder to let Belinda know if you are coming and you haven’t already told us – to help with numbers for catering.
We are so fortunate to get so much help from so many people and there are always too many people to list here but we couldn’t bring it all together without them. A big mention for Pete Wilson though – not only a member of our Racing Club but always so generous with his time and he’s been up twice recently from his Gloucester home to help Belinda take photos of the horses for sale and horses to update our website again which we are in the process of doing. Pete always arrives with a smile and is unflappable!