The
clocks have now changed and it is the turn of the winter jumpers and to say
goodbye to the summer and autumn. It
has been a fantastic summer if you are a horse as the ground has rarely been
firm. Looking at the results in The
Racing Post daily, I am pleased to say I have never seen so few pull up or
finish lame. I cannot bear to see any
horse break down and I just feel a lot of it can be avoided.
It has
also been a good summer for British sport away from racing – the Olympics,
Tennis, Tour de France, Para-Olympics etc..
Some people have taken some sort of inspiration from it all. When I was a jockey I would always look to
an athlete for inspiration, now that I am a trainer I am looking at coaches and
seeing what they are doing. The stand
out person here for me is David Brailsford, team principle of British Cycling
and Team Sky of road cycling. He is
talked about as the greatest British coach ever and it is amazing what he has
achieved. I read the book – Sky’s The
Limit – which is all about the time Dave started to set up a road racing team
and 3 years later they have 1st and 2nd in The Tour de
France! He set out to win the Tour de
France with a clean (i.e. drug free) British rider in 5 years – everybody thought
he was mad and said it wasn’t possible!
It is interesting what you can learn from other sports and apply to your
own. I would recommend this book to
anybody who is interested in improvement!
The
winter jump horses are bang on and due to run soon (first runner on Saturday at
Wincanton with another diary entry to follow shortly on that race) and we are
really pleased with them all; so we are hoping the horses will warm us up! Frosty mornings are now back, so winter and
the excitement of the National Hunt season truly begins…
