Conspiracy

I’m going through a quiet period horse wise.  Mon Michel is probably out for the season, and he was possibly my best prospect for this year.  Tifernati was bought to go hurdling this year, but he had a massive wart on his backside which had to be removed – he should go in to Gary’s at the beginning of January.  …

Hot Horse

A quite incredible day in the financial markets today.  Massive gains around the world were topped off with an almost unbelievable rise of 936 points on the Dow Jones – a move nearly twice as big as the previous all time high move of 499. It’s the sort of fillip the financial world needed to get moving again, and it’s looking …

No Dice

Nothing from my three runners with varying degrees of satisfaction from the runs. Nicky Nutjob ran reasonably well – he finished fourth having had a difficult passage.  He looks as if he’ll be better for further, although that won’t be available to him this year.  He’s entered in the sales and we’d normally just take what we get, but I’m …

Nicky Bea and Betty

Well enough of all this financial meltdown chit chat and on to the important things in life.  Three runners today – Nicky Nutjob and Bet Noir go at Ponty and Bea Menace goes at Warwick. Nicky is a perfectly decent racehorse but I don’t think he’ll make up into much of a 2 year old.  He’ll run respectably today though …

Bloodletting

I spoke to a friend in the financial markets this morning – he said “these are the days when you keep the papers for posterity”.  We’ve had plenty of supposed crashes in the twenty five years he’d been in the city for, but nothing to match the events of recent days.  Lehmans gone, Merrill Lynch and Halifax swallowed up, AIG bailed out …

Victim of success

I read the piece on Tom Dascombe in the RP today, and the fact that he has closed his stable for a while.  Obviously I’ve known about it for a few days – some of Tom’s horses have been running terribly, and on a number of occasions horses that were expected to go well came stone last. I don’t think Tom …

A bad weekend at the office

Ugh.  My hopes and dreams from Friday lie crushed and broken. Marine Boy‘s run was too bad to be true.  He’s a lot better than that – in a sense I’d have been more concerned if he’d been beaten a couple of lengths.  He scoped clean after the race and he trotted up fine – we couldn’t see anything wrong.  …

Bring it on

I travelled up to Newmarket late on Monday night with Mick and we checked into a hotel.  In the morning I went down to watch work with Pete. Winker was out first lot.  He worked extremely well without seeming to extend himself – Pete thought it was there or thereabouts his nicest piece of work this year.  Nicky Nutjob, an …

Betty baby

A debutante from a new trainer for me today as Bet Noir comes out in the 2:20 at Donny.  She is owned by a syndicate made up of members of the Betfair senior management – I have 1/4 of her.  Walter has said from the start that she is a backward type and is unlikely to win this year so I’m not …