16th August 2017

The horses that worked yesterday, Sword of Fate, Equus Amadeus, Vado Forte, Kates Son, Amadoue, Silk Run, Flashing Glance and Thomas Patrick all had quiet canters today. Vado Forte and Flashing Glance had a pop around the loose school this evening.

Simon Sherwood delivered a mobile shelter this morning, it had been bought for a windsucker and a horse I feel has high sensitivity to dust. I had it made with vent air and left it open fronted for maximum ventilation. I will be lining the obvious areas with electric tape in order to stop the windsucker. It took some getting into place as the builder failed to turn up 4 weeks ago when he said he would. We had to prepare the ground while it was assembled elsewhere in the yard.

This afternoon, we added more carpet fibre to the jumping lane with a straw chopper before power harrowing it in.

The BHA have had a non runner review, I was pleased to read the review over ground is rather wooly. Racecourses can’t control the weather but their clerks can be honest about the ground conditions prior to race day weather changes. Many clerks are open and honest, other on the other hand are blatant liars. We took a horse north last year expecting to find good to soft good in places. I walked the track and found very little good ground but plenty of firm. A leading jockey walked the home straight we me and concurred with my findings. We pulled our horse out and drove all the way home. After this latest review I would be opening myself up to be questioned if I choose to run the horse on good to soft ground on another occasion. The BHA may want to review inaccurate going descriptions.

I heard Dale Gibson on ATR this afternoon, he spoke about a horse running the following day having been declared a non runner, suffering from colic the previous day. I agree, this is facile and any abuse of non runners needs to be stopped. However, I would be interested to know what the BHA did. Anyone who has worked at a senior level in any racing yard would know that even in cases of mild colic a horse will be administered 2 sachets of bute immediately. Colic kills more horses than any other illness and chances should not be taken, settling cases of colic early is paramount. Did the BHA drug test the horse when it ran the following day, if so, I can only imagine it was negative. Was the question whether or not the horse did or didn’t have colic raised.