We worked horses up the back of the hill on Wednesday and To
Begin went nicely. I saw an old friend of mine, Simon Christian, having a
coffee in The Lambourn Café and ended up asking him for lunch. Katya has been
busy in the office so it has been up to me to cook lunch and Simon was very
impressed with my culinary skills! After lunch Foxy drove me to Ffos Las where
we had two runners. Royal Redemption ran a lovely race over hurdles finishing 2nd
when needing the run. It will be his last hurdle race as he will be a lovely
chaser for next season and is now going on his Summer break. Our second runner
Gowanauthat ran disappointingly but we subsequently had his blood tested which
showed he isn’t quite right. I think a lot of the horse so will send him off
for his holidays as he needs time recover and look forward to bringing him back
for next season. The drive back from Ffos Las took a long time … it is a very
long way away!
We schooled Verano and Sureness over fences for the first
time on Thursday with Gavin Sheehan on board (see videos below) and they both
jumped very well and I look forward to sending them chasing. That evening we
went to Bobby and Ali McEwen’s for dinner. It was a very jolly evening
and it was lovely to see Rodney Powell and Alex.
On Friday we went to the Cheltenham Sales with an owner
Terry Simmons who had never been to the sales before. We saw some lovely horses
and having been under bidder on quite a few we eventually managed to buy a
really nice 4yr old by Daylami called SOME KINDA LAMA (IRE). He was beaten a
neck in his only Point to Point and the winner went through the sales an
hour earlier (TANARPINO) and was sold for £80000. We paid £30000 for ours so I
think we got a bargain. See photograph of SOME KINDA LAMA below.
He is the first horse bought for the STEEPLECHASERS
PARTNERSHIP and we still have 2 more to buy for them. There is still one share
in STEEPLECHASERS available so do give me a call to discuss if you are interested.
Tony and Rita Stapleton came for Supper at Neardown that evening.
We hadn’t seen them for a while as they had been away and as always it was
lovely to catch up with them. We had 3 Red Letter Days for breakfast on the
Saturday morning and I think they all enjoyed themselves. We then drove to Michael and Judy Maynard’s
for lunch before going to Sandown for AP’s last day as a jockey. I took a
photograph of him weighing in for the last time … it was a very sad day.
We had a lovely lunch with the Maynard’s before going off to
the races. The atmosphere at Sandown was very emotional and I don’t think
I have ever seen so many people in tears at the races before but it
really was the end of an era as we will never see the likes of AP again not
only in racing but in any sport. We have all taken the great man slightly for
granted as he has been around for a very long time but we are going to be an
awful lot worse off without him as he was a great ambassador for our sport.
We went to dinner at James Regard’s in Eastbury that
evening. There were lots of interesting people and the food was delicious.
On Sunday morning Bill Brindle (who is running the
STEEPLECHASERS PARTNERSHIP with Andy Stone) and his wife Hilly came to see
the new horse SOME KINDA LAMA and gave their seal of approval.
Katya and I rode to Ashdown to meet my daughter Tildie and
her friend Ella where we all went on a great fun ride to celebrate Tidies’ 15th
Birthday. On the way home we stopped off for an impromptu drink on horseback at
Kim Meehan’s (see photos below) and then having put our horses away we then
returned to Tumbleweed for a delicious lunch.
We then got Iffy to drive us to Heathrow Airport and as per
usual the M4 was blocked! We had to take a diversion and iffy had to drive like
Lewis Hamilton and we arrived at the airport with only 20 minutes to spare.
Katya and I ran through Terminal 2 like Usain Bolt and only just managed to get
on the flight. I was sweating like a pig unlike Katya who took it all in her
stride!
My man Rheinhardt picked us up from the Airport and we
went to my favourite fish restaurant which Katya enjoyed enormously. On the
Monday morning we got up at 4.30 and Rheinhardt picked us up from our hotel and
drove us to Cologne racecourse where we looked at horses in Peter Schiergen (who
we bought SEVENTH SKY from) yard followed by 3 other yards in the same
area. We saw 17 horses in total and I liked 2 of them – one of which I rode in
the pouring rain.
We have subsequently done a deal on one (subject to vetting)
and are in negotiations for the other one. We flew back to England on the
Monday evening.
We had Ian Piper in all morning on Tuesday updating our website.
He took some incredible photographs which you can see below. I think the one of
Sureness’s mane is a work of art.
Iffy tried to drive me to London that evening as I was meant
to be having dinner with Nick Bannister but once again the M4 was a disaster. It
took me 4 hours to get to junction 12 and in the end we turned around and came
home. Katya had stayed at home to do some office work with our new secretary
Tessa who will be joining us in July so I stopped off at the local Indian
restaurant and surprised them with a curry.
We had Steve Cole and his girlfriend for breakfast and 2nd
lot on Wednesday. They have just joined the newly formed CMRC which now offers
an all-inclusive price of £2000 plus VAT to have a sixteenth share of Cody
Wyoming for the season( there are 2 shares still available so please do
call the office if you are interested )and they wanted to see him before he
went away for the summer. We than had a telephone man in who is now
going to put in a very high tech telephone system for us and then we loaded up
Superb Story and Nimbus Gale who were going off to Colin Tinkler for their
summer holidays. We also collected Airpur Despois (see below) from Colin’s who has
had a short break and is now coming back into training.
Charlotte and William stayed on Wednesday night and at super
we played some very competitive general knowledge games.
We are busy trying to buy horses for the new season and am
off to the sales at Newmarket on Friday. We are also going to have our first
runners of the season this Friday evening at Fontwell . We are running a nice
new horse called TO BEGIN for the first time in a maiden hurdle race and Miller
of Glanmire will run in a chase.
We had a very good schooling session this morning.
Sureness and Verano were very good (once again) over fences with James
Davies on board this time and we hope to run them both over fences in the very
near future.
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