Autumn to Winter

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 1^st and 2^nd 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… 

EPDS Racing yard visit

                   Last Saturday we welcomed EPDS Racing to the yard to see their horses.  It was a great opportunity for existing and new members to meet their horses, see the yard and have a chat.  The horses were in fine form and Shilpa and Poppy worked on the local all weather.  It was a super cold day but we braved the elements for the most beautiful day at the top of the gallops.  Please see some pictures and the great blog about the day from Tracey Sloan (link: http://epdsracing.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/f-f-f-freezing-but-fun-yard-visit.html ).  I certainly enjoyed my pint afterwards with them at The Angel Coaching Inn!

Schooling Fences & Hurdles

Andy Ross and his friend, Tim Holt, came to re-stuff our fences for the new season and a very good job he has done too.  Andy works on the fences at a lot of the point-to-point courses in the West Country and has been well known for doing so for some time now.  He also told me about his successes as a Greyhound trainer and how he has managed to improve some of the dogs from other trainers.  After speaking with him I found out that there are similarities with the training of horses; he said he keeps his dogs happy and relaxed, varies their work, feeds them well, worms them regularly and takes close attention to their electrolyte levels.  Tim Holt also does racecourse photography so we look forward to some pictures of some winners in the West Country!

As you can see from the picture below, the open ditch is looking quite a lot better!  It is certainly an expensive job re-stuffing the fences as the birch costs £5 per bundle and I reckon each fence took over 70 bundles and that’s before we paid Mr Ross & Co for their couple of days’ work – I might well have to start working in the pub at nights!  It certainly is money well spent though, ironing out any jumping problems we might have at home and replicating what they will see on the track.

To contact Andrew Ross for your fences etc., please visit his website: www.racejumps.co.uk

The re-stuffed open ditch

Owners visit

Yesterday it was great to welcome James & Jane Symonds to the yard to see their horse, Fairwood Dante, work on the grass.  The ground was lovely, as we have had quite a bit of rain!  We are also lucky because if it doesn’t rain, we have a lovely place we try and only use in the summer, which has great old downland turf with moss in it, and it is always springy.

Fairwood Dante is back galloping and I am very pleased with him and he is settling great and moving well.  We are hopeful that we can give his sporting owners some fun during the winter. 

Dante (the dog!) on the left with James and Jane Symonds (and Merlin the black lab), coming to visit Fairwood Dante

We also had a lovely lunch at the Symonds’ last Sunday where I was lucky to sit opposite Toby Balding.  It was great to talk with him about the past and people we knew in common.  He has trained Gold Cup, Champion Hurdle and Grand National winners plus Breeder’s Cup Chases (with Morley Street).  I could have spoken with him for hours.  I have great respect for the Baldings as I started life in racing as an apprentice with Toby’s brother Ian.   Although I was always going to go jumping, Sue Horton found me the job at Ian Balding’s flat yard when I was 14 and I can’t tell you how much I learnt there.

EPDS Racing visit to the yard

It was great to welcome John Powell and Tracey Sloan of EPDS Racing to the yard the other day to see their horses.  Sometimes it is good for owners to go and have a bit of quality time with them out in the paddock and this is a lovely picture below.

Tracey has a good eye for a horse and I am always interested to hear what she thinks of their horses as she might only see them once a month and so she notices any change.  I think she thought Homer Run had improved the most.  He has now put on good condition and top line and we felt that now was the time to start walking him after his summer break.  We are hoping that he will now improve as he has had time to strengthen up and forget about the stresses of being in hard work.  He gets on really well with the other horses in the field and has settled very well into his surroundings and the routine.  Don’t forget that there are shares available in this exciting young prospect and EPDS Racing can be contacted via John Powell on tel: 07812 342192 and their website is: www.epds-racing.co.uk .

Steve & Helen Newton also came to the yard to visit ‘Poppy’ whom they have a share in.  They have a retired racehorse of ours called Kavi who won on the flat, over hurdles and fences for Mr Robert Dacombe and the update is that Kavi is enjoying a wonderful and well deserved (barefoot!) retirement.  The picture below if of Poppy (right), Headly’s Bridge (middle) with Outside the Box (left).

Uttoxeter - another win for Red Not Blue with AP McCoy on board

                We had another great day courtesy of Red Not Blue at Uttoxeter on Wednesday, running this time over hurdles over 2m4f.  It was again 24hrs of predicting what the ground would be like and what weather we might get as the horse can be ground sensitive and mostly he wants good ground, but not too firm.  The day before the race the ground would have been too firm for him with a going stick reading of 8.2.  Then water was put on and in the morning of the race the ground was still called Good to Firm but with a going stick reading of 7.7 (the higher the reading the firmer the ground).  After a chat with Charlie Moore (the Clerk of The Course), it was decided that we would make the journey to the racecourse and if I wasn’t happy with the ground after walking the course then we would not run and bring him home.

                We unloaded Red Not Blue at the stables and it started to rain by which time the first race had been run and Tom Scudamore told me it was good to soft!  It continued to rain heavier and heavier so by the time of his race it was soft and there was nobody to be seen in the paddock – everyone was in the bar, apart from the diehards of The Plum Merchants!  It appeared the jockeys were also in the bar or hanging back in the weighing room to keep as dry as possible but last to leave was AP McCoy with The Plum Merchants’ colours on, which gave us some encouragement that he was coming into the paddock to ride, rather than his car to go home!  By this time I was totally uncomfortable by spending so much time so close to The Brigadier (Mr Brian Lewis) under his umbrella that I went to talk to McCoy.  The plan was hatched that it would be time to go hunting and not racing as the ground had deteriorated badly and all was left to the champion jockey to do what he felt best.  He brought him home beautifully in front – what a day!  The Racing Post said ‘Red Not Blue ran on very gamely’, this was his 9^th win.

Again I am very proud of Red Not Blue who I nicknamed ‘Dark Horse’ many years ago because I felt he had such great ability and would surprise us!  He has certainly done that and his two latest runs are arguably his best.  At the age of 9 that is no mean feat and we look forward to hopefully many more races and wins to come.  Thank you to all the staff at home for another great effort.

Winner at Worcester

                It was lovely to have a winner whilst we were away on holiday in Alderney for two weeks.  Holly Brown was in charge and it is great credit to her that everything went smoothly.  Holly has been working for us since December last year and she was previously head girl in an eventing yard before coming to us.  Credit must also go to Sam Goldsmith and Luke Kilgarriff plus Wally Irvine for doing the horse transport.

                Red Not Blue won his 8^th race and 2^nd Novice Chase on 21^st August over 2m7f at Worcester.  Unfortunately Andrew Thornton, who usually rides him, was out of action so AP McCoy (BBC Sports Personality of the year and Champion Jockey!) took over.  We spoke on the phone before the race and AP had already spoken with Andrew.  After the race, AP said he could have won and put the race to bed three fences from home when he was clear, but instead he looked after the horse over the last three fences and they headed him at the last and he still won by four lengths.  Some people think that McCoy wins on horses at all costs, but my experience of him is to the contrary; he looked after Red Not Blue and nursed him home.  Races are now in short supply for Red Not Blue both over hurdles and chases so we will see what happens next.  He came out of his race very well indeed.