Joey Ramsden
What had turned into an extremely quiet weekend, suddenly lit up around three pm Sunday afternoon. Thankfully, before this, everything had run well at Kenilworth.
We did not have much on the go and I was not expecting great things but what did run, ran well. Some moderate horses ran to their ability and one cannot ask for more than that. Sadly, poor Le Capitaine had a good T-boning from the horses drawn on either side of him and this negated any chance he might have had. Poor fellow. His day will come soon.
As for Sunday afternoon’s events, I feel the less said the better.
What I will say is that I feel the whole episode has been handled extremely badly and, true to form, the National Horseracing Authority has done what it does best; go for the cop-out. They have put the blame solely on the horse, which cannot talk or defend itself and sadly. the poor NHA veterinary surgeon must be walking around the NHA headquarters in Natal with an extremely large knife between his shoulder blades.
I have to say that this is not a team environment I would like to find myself in, but probably do, and am. We had a little bit of rain down here on the Sunday but it has not affected us much here at Milnerton and it dawned a beautiful day. Let’s hope the forecasts are wrong and the rain stays away as we really need things to start drying up here and make life a little easier for us all.
Saturday’s Haydock Sprint Cup was an interesting affair, even without the participation of Shea Shea. The winner from Ireland, Gordon Lord Byron, looks to be an extremely good sprinter in the making. It is interesting that the first two past the post are both Irish-trained and confirms the fact that we are not very good at either training sprinters in the UK or producing them. What is also interesting is how little sprint races there are for these horses in Ireland.
There was an interesting piece in the Pacemaker a little while ago, basically begging trainers and owners to keep these horses racing at home. How can they when there are no suitable races, with the correct prize money, for them?
They must come over, like the Vikings, and plunder. Prize money in Ireland is extremely good, even for the bread and butter races, so it does show how the programming and the breeding industry favours the more stoutly bred type of animal. I know the UK trainers would wish for a better Irish program.
Bravura
I am sure Mike has the Prix de l’abbaye at Longchamp on Arc day firmly in his thoughts for Shea Shea. It is more his type of track and, despite the fact Var won it, it is not traditionally won by the strongest of horses. Interesting times ahead.
As I mentioned the other day, it is great to see our Jockey’s ranks in the Cape swelling with Stuart Randolph coming down on a regular basis and the arrival of J P van der Merwe. He is a young man who took the world by storm during his apprenticeship (and after it) riding plenty of winners without a claim. Sadly, the wheels came off and he has battled to get going since then. He is plainly very talented and just needs some rides to gain confidence. I am sure it will not be long before we see JP back in the winner’s enclosure on a regular basis. He rides at bottom weight, is extremely stylish and is strong in the finish. I think he is an extremely good acquisition for the Kotzen yard and Cape racing in general. I just hope he sticks around.
We are starting to get into gear now and pulling out some extremely nice individuals. We have a packed card on Wednesday with some interesting first timers. I am really looking forward to the day, as we go to print.
