A busy day today with no time to blog, so just a quick one.
It was a pretty desperate weekend with some of my best hopes for the season running poorly with no good excuses. Marine Boy ran a respectable fourth on Friday, but I’d hoped he was better than that. Tom’s analysis was fairly sober – “he’s probably not as good as we thought he was”. Winker ran well for about six furlongs and then went out like a light – again there seemed to be no excuses. He’s been outstanding on the gallops but he just won’t do it on the track any more and it’s getting harder to keep the faith – there was talk about retiring him but I’m not sure I see the point in doing that at this time of year. Bea Menace ran poorly.
Maxwell Hawke ran late last night, and I had him in my mind as my best bet of the weekend. He was aggressively opposed in the market – if I hadn’t have been backing him he’d have gone off at a huge price. He led but was swallowed up in the closing stages. finishing nowhere. I went to bed feeling extremely depressed.
I spoke to Pete this morning – apparently Maxwell got very colty beforehand. He was roaring in the ring beforehand and, with apologies to my more refined readers, he “had his dick out in the ring, down at the start, and Alan thought he saw it swinging around during the race”. I felt a lot better hearing this, if a bit foolhardy for having backed him. He’s always been a bit of a lad – next time he runs it may say “br g” next to his name rather than “br c”.
Tifernati goes today in what might be quite a good race at Market Rasen. He’s taken well to hurdling and is fit. Gary was advising caution when I spoke to him, this morning – there’s a couple in the race that could be serious prospects. The conditions look to be in Tif’s favour – the ground looks perfect. I am, as always, hopeful…