19 June 2023
A slightly belated well done to Midnight Jewel for his fantastic win last week at Bangor. For a horse whose handicap mark was, at one stage, only 73, this was his seventh win (4 hurdles and now 3 chases) and his new handicap mark is 116. Horses like him do not come around very often and he has that great winning mentality which a trainer always dreams about with a horse. A big congratulations to Gillian Morgan who lives and breathes for her horses and 'Jester' is certainly giving her and Colin some fantastic days racing. A massive mention also to Bangor on Dee. They put on some fantastic prize money last weekend with Jester's race (0-120) being worth £20,000 and also all the other races being worth far more than you expect to see.
The rest of the week did not go quite as well with the racing. If I Say ran a lovely race at 12-1 to be second at Worcester. It was great to get her back on track and she just loved the quicker ground. Harry the Norseman was disappointing - he slipped into the first and then lost his confidence. Lilly quite rightly pulled him up and there will be plenty of other days for him - he might even consider running on the flat.
Our final two runners of the week were at Uttoxeter on Saturday. It was always going to be a risk running Soldat Forte under a penalty over 2m, but I thought he would get away with it. Unfortunately this was not the case. Despite running a great race, he did not have the speed of the winner and came a good second. He has been great fun for his new team of owners and a step up to 2m4f is our next plan. Our other runner, Present Storm was disappointing, but we think that was due to the soft ground. In all this beautiful sunshine, the racecourse had been so heavily watered that the ground was almost on the soft side of good to soft. It is slightly frustrating when you have gone to the racecourse expecting 'good' ground. However I cannot put too much blame on the clerks of courses at this time of year. They are trying to produce safe ground and with the current weather it is very difficult how quickly their courses will dry - Uttoxeter clearly did not dry back as quickly as expected...
The rest of the Summer team are out this week. Jamacho goes to Stratford tomorrow, Three Macks and Somekindofstar head to Worcester on Wednesday and then we are back to Uttoxeter with Indelible Spin and Moon King on Thursday...
