Joey Ramsden
For the first time in my week’s stay here in the Emirates, the sun is shining and it really is the most beautiful day. All the horses are looking fresh and well for the weekend. The weekend here starts on the Friday, while Saturday and Sunday are fairly normal days – whatever normality is here in the Emirates.
I have yet to find it but when I do I shall let you know. It is the most supernatural place; the type of place I think Michael Jackson would have loved had he lived that little bit longer. It really is the land of Never Never. I am having loads of fun and banter with Mr Mike de Kock, Trevor Brown and Andrew Nienaber. Andrew has been looking after and riding Variety Club. Johnny Geroudis is also over here from Mauritius. It is also great to have superman himself, Anton Marcus, here who is doing an excellent job of taking the mickey out of me most of the time.
Little does he know it is all going into the memory reserves and I will be back with a vengeance later on. On Monday morning Variety Club did a light canter after having a big blow out on Thursday when he did a nice piece of work with what I believe is a very good Group 2 winning 1400m horse of Mike’s.
All were impressed but the only difference is that was on the grass and he will be racing on the tapeta. This is really venturing into no man’s land as far as all of us are concerned.
He runs in the Firebreak Stakes on Thursday over a mile. It is a Group 3 race but we don’t have the draconian rules of Group 1 penalties lasting so long for horses, so his Group 1 penalty does not apply here and he is able to run off a reasonable mark. Everyone is extremely excited and I personally cannot wait for race day on Thursday.
Good Braai Dubai. Mike and Joey keep the fires burning
Tuesday will be fast work day where VC will have his final work out. Anton is striding around like one of Mike’s itchy chickens. He cannot wait to get on with the job. I am sure he finds it most frustrating riding only one or two horses a morning compared to his twelve or thirteen back in SA.
I think it is frustrating for everyone out here as while there is plenty of work going on around one, everything is exceptionally well organised and happens fairly effortlessly – something we will have to work on when I return home. There is also an extremely decent farrier here, Declan Cronin, whom I have known for twenty plus odd years. He has the most remarkable theories and these are really worth discussing – but that is for another day.
However, time is money and tonight we have another prawn, pigeon and lamb braai going on at the Blue Stable complex. It is all systems go and I think de Kock and I are off to buy yet more prawns and carrots. The blokes at the supermarket will think we are running a restaurant. So it is prawns for us and carrots for the big chestnut horse.
Ed note
Variety Club is one of 19 entries (max 16 can run) for the USD200 000 Gr3 Firebreak Stakes to be run over a mile on Thursday evening on the all weather track. Fields are not available at time of going to print.
