Changeable Weather

        Only Fools Winner at Ludlow 

It’s hard to get away from talking about the weather at the moment so I am going to start with it here!  It is crazy to think that on Saturday morning at Pond House we experienced the coldest morning for quite some time with water drinkers frozen and a big chill in the air.  Fast forward the clock 48 hours and we had torrential rain and places began to flood!

The racing has been affected but it can’t really be helped.  At Leicester they would have raced on Saturday but by Sunday morning they had snow and ice so had to abandon their fixture.  The jumper’s bumper all-weather card at Southwell yesterday was abandoned and while racing did go ahead at Carlisle there was a lot of trouble for some people even getting to the track because of snow.  There were a lot of non-runners and much depleted fields, so the track may have wishes they had abandoned anyway!

We have recorded the wettest October and November months combined total rainfall since we began keeping our records over 20 years ago.  128.5mm of rain fell in October in addition to 167.5mm in November.  Out of 61 days in the two months together, 37 of them were wet! Total rainfall for the year has already past the previous highest and so we are well on target to record the wettest year at Pond House since we starting measuring it.  We are only on 4^th December but have already had 45mm of rain in those few days so we will just have to see what the rest of the month brings!   Prospects for racing do not look that great for some of the meetings later this week including Leicester, Exeter and Wincanton so fingers crossed we do not get too much more rain in the coming days and racing can go ahead.

Last Week

After a winner at Ludlow last Monday thanks to Only Fools we were pretty quiet on the runner’s front for the rest of the week.  Bashful Boy and Shot Boii both filled fourth position in their respective races while abandonments have kept our runners to a minimum.  Remastered pulled up in the Coral Gold Cup at Newbury on Saturday.  He was running well until leaving his hind legs behind making a mistake at the water at half way.  That put him on the back foot a little and even though he was still in with a chance leaving the back straight he wasn’t quite going well enough to get properly involved and so Jack Tudor pulled him up.  He has come out of the race fine which is the main thing and there will be easier opportunities for him going forwards.

This Week

It would have been nice to start this week as we had the last two, with a winner on a Monday but unfortunately for us, Plumpton was abandoned today because of waterlogging.  I am sure Kingofthewest would have kept up our winning sequence!

We now have no jumps runners until Thursday at the earliest but we do have Ocean Heights declared to run on the flat at Kempton on Wednesday.  He will run in his second handicap race having finished third on handicap debut at the track last time at a big price.  He steps up in distance slightly which will suit and hopefully he won’t be far away.

On Thursday we have entries at Leicester, Market Rasen and Wincanton but it looks like the weather could have it’s say on any plans.  We have several entries at Exeter on Friday and King Turgeon has an entry at Sandown.  Keep checking the Daily News for the latest information on our runners and the weather!

It could be a busy Saturday for the team with entries at all four of the jumps meetings.  We have several entries at Chepstow which includes Irish point to point winner Jurancon who could make his stable debut in the Bumper.  Vision De Maine is entered in the 2m3f novice hurdle and looks a potential nice recruit to the hurdling ranks.  Paricolor, Bumpy Johnson and Duc De Beauchene make up our team of entries here.  At Aintree we have an entry for Eden Du Houx in case Exeter is called off on Friday and we confirmed Sidi Ismael for the Becher Chase over the Grand National fences.  He is a lovely staying chaser who needed his comeback run at Haydock last time.  He is a good jumper who stays and loves testing conditions so he could give hopefully his owners, a lot based locally in Liverpool something to cheer about!  At Sandown we have Brinkley entered in the Pertemps handicap hurdle and I hope he can back up his good Uttxoeter effort from last time and if he can, he is potentially well treated.  Jilaijone and Sizing Pottsie hold entries in the 2 mile handicap hurdle and we will decide later in the week if they are likely to take up their engagements.

Horse Writers Awards London

Gerry Supple and I eventually made it to London on Monday for the Horse Writers Awards lunch – our train had to take a detour because of the weather but we did make it a little later than planend.  I will let you know if we made it home safely next week! 

Christmas is coming

Leanne and I went to get our Christmas tree with the children over the weekend.  They are super excited and have decorated it by themselves so we are definitely all feeling more Christmassy!   Not long now!