I couldn’t be more thrilled for supportive owner/breeders Roger & Yvonne Allsop after their 9 year old Kayf Tara gelding won the first race of his career at their local Hereford track on Friday. In doing so he provided our Harry Atkins with his first winner as a Conditional Jockey and became our 25th winner of the season. I declared Samtara on Wednesday just hours before he was due to run at Warwick in case anything went wrong that day as I didn’t think the Hereford race looked that strong. He ran well, over 3 miles 2 furlongs, at Warwick to finish 4th and the plan had been to declare him a non runner. However, he was bright and well and there were 3 non-runners so we decided to take our chance and ride him differently this time and make the running.
Harry got him settled in front and he jumped for fun and only had to be pushed out to win by a comfortable 5 lengths and break Samtara’s losing run of 16x over hurdles and 5x over fences. Sadly Roger & Yvonne Allsop had an appointment that couldn’t be changed so were unable to be there but we will make sure we make up for it. We are absolutely thrilled for them both as they have been such great supporters of ours and of racing in general and it was much deserved for their patience. Another twist of fate was that Jasmin Richards, who left working for us full time a few months ago, was in to ride out on Friday morning and, when the decision was made to run Samtara, changed her plans to come and lead him up. She rode him out daily and looked after him the whole time she was here so it was very fitting that she was there for this fabulous win.
Yesterday we took Wide to West and Witness Protection to Newbury and both ran well. Wide To West is learning all the time and put in a solid run to finish a good 4th albeit at a huge price and well beaten by the runaway winner.
Witness Protection ran a huge race, also under James Best, trying to make all the running over a trip further than we have ever run him over, only being headed 2 out but staying on for a good 4th.
No runners today however no rest for the wicked as it’s our annual finance review and lunch afterwards which is always the fun part!