Gabrielle
It was an unexpectedly bright morning here in Newmarket this morning and the ground will have dried up slightly but the rain has just started falling now. I was pleased with how the horses were looking and some nice Spring sunshine will help to bring them along.
I rode the hack Senior Whim up to the July Course this morning to support Richard Farquhar as he finishes his Walking The Courses journey. He is raising money for two fantastic causes in Pancreatic Cancer UK and Racing Welfare and it has been a fantastic effort by him and his whole team, I hope they achieve their intended fundraising target. We had a lot of owners visiting La Grange this morning. Chris and Carol Kilroy came to see their Oasis Dream filly Sparkle, Alan and Lyndsey Mann visited their filly Sagely and Robert Gray came to see Aillgator. David Hicken was with us to see Ripper Street and Patrick Milmo and Jeremy Gompertz joined us for lunch.
We had a frustrating day yesterday, Swiftee showed us some promise in the Wood Ditton and it looked like a good maiden. Makman was keen and ran his race in the first part of the race rather than the second before getting tired in the Novice Stakes, he will have a break now to freshen him up. Amazing Red ran a pleasing race in the ten furlong maiden and he showed his inexperience before and during the race, it looked like a decent contest. Al Hamd got left seven lengths at Beverley and it was frustrating but you just have to draw a line through the run and look to the future with him. We have not had much bad luck this season but unfortunately it is a part of horse racing and I just hope that it is our bad luck out of the way now for a while.
Gabrielle is our sole runner today up at Newmarket in the fillies’ maiden at 2:10. She looks to be up against it but we hope she can show us a little more than she did on her debut. The weather has meant we only have two declarations at Wolverhampton on Saturday, it looked like being an extremely busy end to the week but mother nature has changed that. I do not want to give horses seasonal debuts on very bad ground that could then leave its mark for the rest of the campaign.