It has
been an entertaining season as always.
And it has been great to see some different faces winning the big races
and my highlights are:
-
The whole Sire De Grugy story and The Moore family winning
the Champion Chase with the horse and Sire De Grugy being named horse of the
year. I remember Gary Moore, the
trainer, from my riding days, and he was a real horseman, honest and always
tried his best on a lot of moderate horses mostly around the delights of
Plumpton and Fontwell. He probably rode
longer than Andrew Thornton (by that I mean in leg length and not the amount of
years riding!). Gary doesn’t seem to
have changed much from those days and he deserves what he gets and I just love
the fact that he has got an absolute fantastic horse.
-
Dr Richard Newland & Leighton Aspell winning The Grand
National and the fact that all the horses came back safe. A credit to Aintree with the modifications
to the course and it certainly hasn’t lost its spectacle.
-
Jim Culloty & Davy Russell winning The Gold Cup with
Lord Windermere. I have always watched
Davy since he took ‘the wrong’ course in the cross country at Cheltenham
several years ago. He cut off the
corner and went inside some of the hedges whilst the others went around. It looked sure that he would be disqualified
in the stewards’ inquiry but he kept the race, as the course had not been
correctly marked. I thought back then
that this guy has balls and must be very shrewd. It was shock news when Davy lost out on being first choice jockey
and ridding all the good horses at Gigginstown. He took it very well in public and with unlucky Bryan Cooper
injured at Cheltenham he was back on Gigginstown horses and won! Davy is an
example of a true professional.
For us, in a small way, I have
been happy with the season. We have
improved our prize money again from the previous year and we have had 50% of
the horses in the money for our owners, which is something we try to do as a
minimum. We haven’t had a faller or
unseated rider all year and we have gone through the season again without a
single horse getting a tendon injury or breaking down. We pride ourselves on the horses being
schooled well at home and we look after their feet – barefoot of course is key.
Our young horses have been
learning their trade and have progressed well.
We have taken things quietly with them so as to set them up well for
hopefully many years of fun for their owners to come. We certainly have a lot to look forward to next season with them.
Each year, since we set up on our
own again in November 2007, we have managed to improve on the previous season,
all I hope for is steady improvement and I am quite happy for it to be done
quietly as I don’t like making a song and dance about things. We also learn so much from season to season
and I hope that we can keep getting better at training horses. I remember starting out again in November
2007 with just four horses and this year we were almost full (we will always
have room for more!). The quality of
the horses is improving.
Some of the things we have
improved last season are as follows:
-
Bedding: It is
crucial that we don’t have any mould and fungal spores that could get into the
horses lungs and switching to our new type of bedding has definitely
helped.
-
Top quality haylage:
We also always now analyse our haylage when we get the new harvest in
the autumn and we check the mineral balance, energy levels and again check this
for spores, moulds and dust. If the
mineral balance is out with their diet then that can lead to a whole load of
problems.
-
Individual saddles: Most of our horses are very lucky now
in that they have their own, made to measure saddles and because of this we
have gone through the season without a horse having a sore back. We don’t have any race exercise saddles now
on the yard!
We have had new owners come to
us last season of which I hope they stay with us. I hope that we can provide all our owners with a good service,
keep them regularly informed and be transparent in all that we do. It is very rare that when training a
racehorse that things always go smoothly and there are many ups and downs, I
have rarely known a horse go through its training without some sort of set
back, mostly minor. We tell our owners
as it is and sometimes there can be despair but we generally get there in the
end. There is a saying that you treat
your owners like mushrooms (keep them in the dark and feed them a load of S**t)
but for us that does not apply!
Thank you to everyone for your
continued support and to the valuable team of staff and practitioners at Simon
Earle Racing who look after all the horses so well. Most of the horses are now enjoying their summer break being
turned out in the paddocks so we go into a quiet period now with very little
runners.
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