The smart Red Ray. Joey hoping he satisfies that Guineas hunger
Christmas is upon us. We have had all the mourning over Nelson Mandela to come to terms with which has been an extremely sad occasion for us all. What a remarkable man and no words can ever describe what he did for this country.
It is quite difficult to then go on to the daily week after all that but everything has remained much the same here, except for a lot of place cheques and not enough winners. It was lovely to win for Wayne (Kieswetter) and Brian (Finch) with Marmalady.
She is by Duke of Marmalade, who is a sire that is doing quite well across Europe. One thing is for certain; there is no more loyal Duke of Marmalade punter than Wayne. He absolutely adores him. Marmalady is a smashing filly but I think her time will only come in 3 or 4 months when you will get to see the best of her. The rest have been running well and fingers crossed we start winning a few races.
We obviously have the big feature race, the Guineas, coming up next Saturday, which I am hungry for. Red Ray put in a nice piece of work at Kenilworth last Saturday and everyone pronounced themselves extremely pleased. He obviously has a tough draw to overcome. Captain America also does not have everything his own way but I don’t for one moment think it is a two horse race. I feel it will be a wide open affair and one of the strongest colt’s Guineas I have seen for a long while.
I quite rightly got a bollocking from the breeder of the Fillies Guineas winner In The Fast Lane as I got my timeline wrong. My father did in fact own her granddam. Her name was First Debutante and he did breed the mother of the winner of the Fillies Guineas, First Arrival, who was born in 1996.
She was not the biggest foal and we sold her in 1998 for R35 000 (the sale average for that year was R88 000 so that says it all). This would ultimately make her mother that much older. All I can say is well done to the breeders and good luck. I apologise for the timeline error. Sadly it happens to all of us with age.
The real point of the story was that one never knows what comes from what and I remember my father investing heavily into breeding and racing and falling flat on his face. The one that turned out to be good, we let go due to having had enough previous moderates. Anyway, someone managed to benefit which is one of the great things about horse racing. It is a game for everyone and nothing is impossible.
Many, many moons ago, in the late 70’s, my favourite rock band was a bunch of complete wallies called the Boomtown Rats, headed by the great Sir Bob Geldof. He used to write some of the most fantastic music. Sadly they only lasted for a couple of albums. The Fine Art of Surfacing being one and A Tonic for the Troops being the other.
On one of those albums was the song “I Don’t Like Mondays” and I can certainly concur with that following this past public holiday results. There were some extremely poor performances for no reason whatsoever.
I will have to go back to my bio rhythms theory. I will also give another theory; we had one horse which had an opportunity of winning two or three weeks ago and he was given a rather unfortunate ride and subsequently did not win. Anyway, all was well and I thought we would wait for a decent draw and run him again in a few weeks time (which was Monday\) and all would work out fine. Well, things definitely did not work out fine.
It is one of those great life lessons that come round to kick one in the backside; one has to grasp the opportunities when they first come your way as more often than not, you don’t get another chance.
Monday was a perfect example of this. Having had a small bet last time, I lumped it on this time. Through no fault of the pilot this time, the horse was beaten. Sadly his chances went two to three weeks ago along with my hard-earned stash.
Anyway, I have picked myself up and was at work at Milnerton bright and early the next day, looking forward to the day ahead and to giving Red Ray a piece of fast work. All being well, that was expected to bring a smile to my dial. I am very much looking forward to this week.
It has been busy with two meetings already this week. Despite the busy season, I hope I can keep my blog up as it has been a bit sporadic of late. Nothing is ever easy and on that note, this is your Cap-tain signing off.
