7th April 2017

The 2 days in Aintree proved to be successful, Blackbow sold nicely, he was bought by Harold Kirk for £150,000 to go into training with Willie Mullins, he was the nicest horse in the sale and now we can hope he turns out to be the best racehorse in the sale. This year’s sale at Aintree held by Goffs UK was only the 2^nd year it has been staged, they proved it works as the results were outstanding.

I am not going to go into detail at this stage about The Big Bite being balloted out as I need to find out who rated them for the ballot. We all except ballots are part of racing, some you win some you lose. However, on this occasion, winners didn’t receive preference and I need to investigate further before criticizing what appears to be a ludicrous way of framing a ballot. Under normal circumstances at least 3 runs are required to give a horse a rating. Yet on this occasion they were happy to rate many off one run. One horse without a ballot mark, prior to todays race had had 4 previous stabs at winning a bumper finishing 8^th,4^th,3^rd and 6^th. No doubt, I can only imagine, a spotty 17-year-old did the ratings on a week’s work experience.