23rd October 2017

Ffos Las on Saturday was an experience, the drive down there was blowy and wet. It didn’t improve on arrival, thankfully, the wind was behind the horses down the back and head on in the straight, had it of been a cross wind they would have had no chance of staging the racing. Kimberlite Candy jumped well but struggled in the deep ground. He is still work in progress and a huge big baby. I still maintain what he achieved over hurdles was way above our expectations. He won’t be the finished article for sometime to come yet but is a lovely horse for the future. The girls in their party frocks on such a foul day made for some amusing people watching moments, they were clearly expecting the weather to improve or maybe it became irrelevant after several pints of something.

This morning we schooled Polydora, Silk Run, David's Pheobe, Sir Egbert, Luck of the Legion, Thomas Patrick, Snapdragon Fire, Vado Forte, He’s a Goer and Thistle Do Nicely over hurdles. Routine canters for everything else.

Snapdragon Fire and Thomas Patrick run at Exeter tomorrow, I loath running our horses against each other but the races are filling up and many will be getting balloted out. Snapdragon Fire hasn’t learnt to race yet so will benefit from the experience and Thomas Patrick needs to sharpen up and realize he’s a racehorse. We lack very little, if anything here when it comes to facilities but we simply do not have a gallop to get speed work into the horses, the sand is deep and the hill too steep for speed work. A few years ago Paul Nicholls put in a flat gallop for exactly that and maybe in time we will do the same.