Little do they know

The week begins and all my thoughts are with Max One Two Three.  I spoke to Mick earlier and he said he dreamt about her last night – I hope he didn’t cry out anything compromising.  I read a couple of write ups on the 1,000 this morning, neither of them mentioning Max.  “Little do they know” I thought. Bouguereau …

Collateral form

I’ve had jumpers running over the last few days with no luck  In truth it’s been a pretty disappointing jumps season –  some fairly expensive purchases have run poorly, the only real high point having been Mon Michel winning a few months ago.  I’m pretty happy with what I have for the flat this year though – the first big day …

Max on target

Max One Two Three did an important piece of work this morning, and was scoped afterwards.  She worked really nicely and scoped clean – we are now bang on for the 1,000.  She will have one more piece of work early next week and that will be it.  She is a very decent filly with a real turn of foot – …

The joy of six

Timeform rated Bouguereau‘s run 107 whereas the Racing Post went 105.  Either way he rates good enough to have a go at the Italian Derby.  They’ve moved the race forward this year (May 11) which is good for us, but they’ve dropped the distance from 2400 to 2200 metres which is not so good.  Prize money is currently 1 million …

A tale of two seconds

I was a bit down yesterday thinking about the number of second places I have, so I checked out the stats.  The stats are poor for horses running in my name – 3 wins, 7 seconds, 6 thirds from 39 runs.  If I include all horses I have a piece of the figures are 22-30-14 – not great but not a disaster.  …

Double Bubble

I thought the Craven yesterday was a proper horse race.  Raven’s Pass and Twice Over slaughtered what looked to be a decent field in a very smart time – they could turn out to be two very good horses, and the 2,000 could be a real strong race this year.  I backed one of Tom’s last night – Firth of …

Craven bet

I’m fairly busy at the moment with no time to go racing – I’ll go to Newbury on Friday where I’ll hopefully have two runners.  The forecast for Friday at Newbury is heavy rain – not good news for Bouguereau although not a problem for Skid Solo. Today is the Swindon Town FC golf day and I’m playing in that …

Racing update…

Some snippets from my conversations this morning; In the Free handicap there is a lot of confidence behind Stimulation.  No surprise perhaps as he is the favourite. Pete tells me that Skadrak will like this ground and trip.  There are, however, very strong vibes for Virtual who I’m told was unlucky last season and has wintered very well.  It may …

Craven Day 1

The Craven meeting starts today, and for me it’s the start of the flat season proper.  I’ve had runners on this day a couple of times before and it’s a meeting I like – I was going to run Bouguereau in the Feilden today but we are preferring to go to Newbury on Friday. The main interest for me is Rayvin …

Winker pulls out

Pete called this morning with the news – they had gone out with Winker and he was moving ‘like an old man’, a bit hunched and sluggish.  The vet had indicated that this was a minor problem, but it wasn’t going to stand up to training in the short term and Pete wanted to back off.  No-one disagreed.  We have …