20th August 2015

On Tuesday 11^th we took Barney Windsor Clive and Evelyn Faber to watch Cody Wyoming cantering up the gallops, who was in tremendous form and looks a picture right now.

We picked up a nice Proclamation filly from Sue Welch last week and have sent her to Mark Grant, who has a breaking yard locally, to get broken in before she is sent on to us. She is a lovely looking strong filly.

I have been riding out two lots most days lately and getting on as many different horses as possible; I really think we have got a quality bunch this year and I am enjoying getting to know the youngsters.

Jill Mayo and Bryan Beacham came over last Wednesday. They came to see some of the new horses as well as their own Gowanauthat.  We are very pleased that Jill has decided to come into The Neardowners; the shares are selling fast, which is really great.

We sent Lord of House for a new life as a show horse/hunter, under the care of Lucy Ralph, who has had another ex-racehorse of ours, as unfortunately his wind operations have not been very successful. It is a big blow for both us and the owners as he was a decent horse and won some good races, but at the end of the day, if the horse cannot run to its maximum ability, there is no point in carrying on, which is a great shame. He will be sorely missed, but we hope he has a very good life in a different role. Lucy has been keeping in touch and reports that he is settling in well. She is taking him to Newmarket this week as she is working at the BRS for the next 6 weeks – I think he is getting pampered!

We have done lots of schooling lately, which as I said in my last blog, I find very exciting. We schooled Dragon City last week; he was a revelation! Airpur Desbois was also very good over hurdles – Tommy was very pleased with him.

I had a nice surprise second lot as Peter Toole turned up on the yard – he was staying with his friend Jack Pilkington for a few days and called in on us which was great. I drove him up to the gallops and talked about old times and new ventures. I am delighted that Peter is in such good form and in very good terms with himself. I am looking forward to having a days hunting with him in Ireland in the winter!

It absolutely poured it down last Thursday. We took Sureness to Fontwell, but had to take her out, as the ground got very soft. Sam Twiston Davies was due to ride her and said the ground was very variable as well.

John and Veronica Thorneloe came to see their horses and also bought a share in The Neardowners, which is fantastic.

I got absolutely soaked on Friday riding out two lots. We schooled Sureness over fences in preparation for her race at Southwell on Sunday 16^th. She flew over the fences and was in great form, so we had high hopes for her run.

I took Katya down to Southampton last Friday, and got a ferry over to Cowes. We stayed with some friends called Martin and Laura Levi at their lovely house called “The Prospect”. It was the big fireworks night that evening, which marks the end of Cowes week. It was great fun and we saw lots of people that we knew.

On Saturday we ran To Begin at Market Rasen but unfortunately he bled again, so we are getting his wind done as we speak and hoping that will help him.

We had a very good lunch on the top floor of a double decker bus overlooking the harbour at Cowes on the Saturday – we had lobster and chips, washed down with a bottle of Champagne and it really was quite something! Charlotte, Patrick and a friend went to Newbury’s Ladies Day and said they saw some interesting (!) outfits!

We drove home from Cowes, and had a very good lunch party on Sunday with lots of people from the village, cooked beautifully by Katya. She had marinated some steaks, which were ever so tasty.

Sureness ran at Southwell in a race that was made for her, but unfortunately the best jumper in the field fell at the second fence and in avoiding him, she managed to get rid of her jockey Gavin Sheean. She jumped every fence lose and quickened up well in the straight to win by a good margin, although unfortunately without a jockey. I think she would have won if that hadn’t have happened, so as you can imagine, it was pretty frustrating!

A young lad from Ireland named Shane Harte started working here on Monday. He has ridden in point to points in Ireland and rides quite nicely. He is hoping to get his Amateur’s licence and seems to be fitting into the team well.

Andy Durham and Darrell Muffitt came for lunch on Monday – Darrell bought the last share in Cody Wyoming; it is great to get him on board, and nice that the partnership (Charlie Mann Racing Club I) is complete!

The final three horses; Dukes Den, My Anchor and Chief Bottlewasher; came in from their holidays at Colin Tinkler’s and they are being ridden as of now. They are currently just doing roadwork, but I am looking forward to seeing them canter. All three are FOR SALE.

We were woken by the dogs at 5am on Tuesday morning and discovered two ponies on the lawn! Luckily they hadn’t done too much damage, and had chosen to eat the grass rather than any of Katya’s plants!

John Davies and his son Luke came down for lunch on Tuesday and I showed them their horses.

On Wednesday, we had Bill Brindle in for breakfast. He watched the four horses he has shares in on the gallops second lot and Patrick managed to get out of bed to film them in their slower paces. Bill is very excited about the oncoming season as all of his horses are looking extremely well right now. The Steeplechasers look as if they have three nice young horses, so there is lots to look forward to!

Katya and I took Patrick, Matilda and William to Barbury Castle Shooting School to shoot clays yesterday, which I must say was quite good fun. I think the children might go again for a days lesson.

http://www.barburyshootingschool.com/

Following on from Barbury, we headed to Worcester races to watch Airpur Desbois finish third in his first Novice Hurdle; it rained most of the evening but was quite warm. He ran a nice race and should win something. We had a delicious dinner with his owner David Fox afterwards. James was playing at Worcester after racing, so there was a big crowd which is always nice to see. It had also been Ladies Day, so again, there were lots of interesting/bizarre outfits on display! Tommy and Matty won best turned out with Airpur Desbois – he looked an absolute picture in the paddock!

This morning we schooled Dragon City over hurdles with Mr Big as a lead horse; he jumped beautifully. We also took Sureness up to the schooling ground to see how fresh she was after her “race” and she was crazy, so is in very good form! She has an entry at Worcester on Sunday but I think the ground will be too soft for her – we will wait and see. We then schooled Baltic Storm and Aspasius over their first ever poles in the ring; they both looked like naturals and I was very pleased with them.

Kyril, one of our lads took this nice photo of some of the horses looking over their stable doors, it's so nice to see them looking so happy and well:

Summer 2015

Please forgive me for my lack of blog; I will endeavour to keep it up to date from now on.

We have had a very busy summer so far, which has taken our minds off the fact that the weather hasn’t been the warmest on record. In fact we even had a frost on the 30^th July!

We have bought some lovely new horses who have been in for about 5 weeks now. The majority of them are cantering and I have managed to sit on all the new horses and I must say they are a really impressive lot. We still have shares available in a couple of syndicates (which I will fill you in on later) but they are selling fairly quickly.

We have a lovely new secretary called Tessa Champion, who started just in time to help Katya and the lovely Chrissie to organise all the golfers at our Charlie Mann charity golf day in June. It was the first time in fifteen years that we had more players turn up than we actually needed. It was a fantastic day, the golf was won by Sylvester Kirk, Mark Grant, Dominic Ffrench Davies and Jason. Mark  Grant was definitely the secret weapon! We raised over £5000 for the Injured Jockeys Fund and I think everyone thoroughly enjoyed themselves and now Katya has organised it once, we are hoping to make it an even bigger success next year, so get your teams in early!!

Myself, Katya and Tess have been very busy over the summer working hard to get new owners in and we have got a bigger team of horses this year than last. We did have one wonderful week away in turkey though to escape from all the work! Katya, myself, Matilda, William, Charlotte and Patrick all went away on a gullet (which is a Turkish sailing boat) and sailed around the West coast of Turkey, stopping off at two different bays every day. It was a great success as we ate very good food, spent our days reading and swimming in the sea and the children didn’t see a television for a whole week!

We had a very good steeplechasers lunch on the 5^th July. This syndicate is now full and all the members seem very pleased with the horses that we purchased for it. From there we went onto the July meeting at Newmarket and bought a couple of really nice horses at the sales. One of them is the biggest 3 year old that I have ever seen called Capatosta (USA). I then drove up to Northumberland where my brother Robbie married his lovely new wife Emma on Holy Island. It was a really wonderful weekend where I managed to catch up with lots of relatives and old friends.

On the 16^th July, Andy Weller and Andy Durham came for lunch. Katya cooked a delicious lunch and Andy Weller actually didn’t leave until the next morning after finishing the evening with a late night Indian!

It hasn’t all been wining and dining though – we have managed to fit in some tennis, which is a sport that I really enjoy. I partnered an owner and friend of mine, Barney Windsor Clive, in mens doubles match against J Francome and J Rowlinson, and whilst we flew into the lead winning the first set 6-1, they then beat us in the next two sets 6-4, 6-4. Perhaps we could have more success in the mixed doubles as this might affect Franc’s concentration a little bit!!

We have had a very quiet summer runners wise as we do not have many summer jumpers, which has been a little frustrating. Having managed to do all five days of Royal Ascot, I thought I would never want to go racing again, but actually I am longing to get back into the nitty gritty of going racing on a regular basis! We have got Sureness entered next week at Fontwell and Southwell, and To Begin has some entries at Market Rasen next Saturday, so things are starting to pick up.

We have been schooling some of the younger horses recently – Dragon City and Airpur Desbois – in the sand ring and they both jumped beautifully. Schooling young horses for the first time never fails to excite me and these two really were very pleasing.

We also took Katya’s horse Agnes B up to Meridian Stud so that Elizabeth could have a lesson on her with Ruth Honey. She was very impressed with the way she went and thinks she is a very natural jumper. I have to say that if she doesn’t make it as a race horse (which we very much hope she will) she will definitely have another job as an eventer! We hope to run her in a bumper first but it is good for a young horses balance to school them over poles. Katya says it is the best birthday present she has ever had!

We also went to a big lunch at Newbury on the 18^th of July for John Hills memorial. There was a very big turnout, which is testament to what a popular person he was. He was a great friend of mine and is very sorely missed.

We went to Simon Christian’s 60^th birthday party at Oaksey House last Sunday and saw lots of people that we haven’t seen for a while. Again it was a very good turnout and I am sure Simon was thrilled to see so many friends. Well done to everyone who organised it!

I also went to the New Forest show with Sue Welch last week and was very surprised as the was  much bigger than I had anticipated. It was lovely to catch up with Sue and I look forward to having her Proclamation filly join our yard tomorrow.

As I mentioned previously, we have lots of lovely new owners, but most notably, we have just got our youngest owner on board. He is called George Fitzgerald O’Connor – he is only 6 years old and he has come into the Charlie Mann Racing Club. If George is the youngest member of our owner entourage, then I must also mention Tom and Liz Slater who most definitely travelled the furthest to visit us. They popped over from New York to go to a wedding in Hertfordshire on the Saturday and then spent the Monday morning with Tess, looking around the yard whilst we were away in Turkey.

Since the horses have come back into the yard from their summer holidays, they have most definitely had the “once over”. Not only has Matty, our Head Lad, done a great job in the hairdressing department, they have also had their teeth done and also we welcome on board a new Chiropractor called Stuart who came to the yard yesterday to treat a few of the horses. They all seem very happy with what he did and he even put his healing hands to our cat Oscar, who having been hit by a car and having his tail amputated thoroughly enjoyed having some TLC!

I am sorry for anything that I might have forgotten but there seems to have been so much going on this summer, but I am now back in my work routine and will be providing you with a regular blog from now on.

As I mentioned earlier, we do still have shares available in syndicate horses and also horses for sale as a whole – please look at our website for more details and contact me to discuss things further!