I went to Ascot on Thursday, feeling a bit sheepish – parts of my blog had been written up in the Racing Post, and it had also been written up on an Australian news site.
Skid was running in the first race – I was hopeful of a decent run but he could never go the pace and trailed in tenth of eleven. Alan shrugged his shoulders, he said the ground was like concrete, he said he just couldn’t go with them and suggested we look for an easy maiden for him somewhere. We went inside to watch Scrapper Smith run – he also ran poorly, Pete winning the race with a 2/5 shot and notching his first 2yo winner of the season.
I noticed that Jeremy Noseda had pulled all of his horses out – I don’t know if it was because of the ground or because he was unhappy at the way they were running.
The rest of the day passed without a winner, although I wasn’t really betting. I chatted to a lot of different people, including Mike de Kock who I had never met before. I left early to avoid the traffic, and also because one of my feet was hurting.
On Friday morning my foot was so bad that I could hardly walk on it. I stayed at home and watched the telly. I was big on Cuis Ghaire – I was annoyed after the race that I hadn’t had more on as she looked a total cert on paper. I would have backed Patkai but I missed the race – it’s more solid form for Bouguereau’s Newbury race though. I was busy on Saturday and only got home in time for the last race – I had a decent bet on Honolulu who again looked a class apart. It ended up a very profitable Ascot.
There were a number of “could have beens” on Saturday. Billy Dane, a former Comic Strip horse, won at Redcar. Kasban, a horse I tried to buy but got outbid for won at Newmarket. Tom finally won (pretty convincingly) with Firth of Fifth, who seemed to appreciate the extra furlong – Nicky Vaughan also won a race.
In terms of ownership, a season that had promised so much is looking a bit disappointing at the moment. Plenty of time for it to pick up though. In some respects I’m glad I didn’t have runners towards the end of the week – the ground was pretty firm and I’m hearing of a lot of horses that came out extremely sore, and in some instances horses that may never run again.