One I forgot to mention – Captain Hurricane runs on Friday at Newmarket. He’s been pretty useless for a long time now, but I think that there’s a decent chance he’ll come right one day and when he does he’ll be a seriously well handicapped horse. He got to a point where he was so aggressive that no-one wanted to ride him.
I remember when Alan Munro rode him at Newmarket – Munro was white as a sheet in the ring beforehand and clearly didn’t want to get on the horse. When they got out on the course Munro couldn’t hold him and he bolted down to the start – he got so hot and angry that he had to be withdrawn, and Munro never rode him again. Mick Kinane rode him next having never sat on the horse before. After the race Kinane got off him as quick as he could and marched over to us cursing with a red face – “That horse is a f**king c**t”. He’d tried several times to bite Kinane in the stalls and later he’d refused to race.
We decided it wasn’t happening at Pete’s, and the best chance was to have him gelded and move stables. He went to Manton to be trained by Brian Meehan. For the first month or so Brian just had one of the girls walk him round the stable chatting to him. He’s been gelded and he was making a fair bit of noise so we had to have a small operation on his windpipe as well. He’s been coming back to himself slowly, and I think there are signs that our patience may pay off. Fingers crossed.
In other news – Shepherd’s Warning, who had been targetted at the sales race won’t go for that as we don’t have an entry any more. David Evans, her first trainer, had made the entry – when we rang him and asked if he could release it he apparently said that he would only do so if we gave him £450. I didn’t like that very much – we’ll have to find her another target now.