First things first, and the diet’s going ok – 18st3 this morning. I’ve had a headache but nothing worse than that – I still haven’t worked out how I intend to do it, but the one thing I know I must do is break my sugar habit permanently. Thanks all for the encouraging comments.
I’m having a fairly quiet patch with the horses. I have one coming out soon called Hope Road – he isn’t in the list and I have a fairly small piece. He’s a hurdler trained by Tom Dascombe. The big feature coming up could be the Tote Gold Trophy for Mon Michel – it’ll be a big day out if he gets in and we need 30 or so to come out for that to happen.
I’ve done a ring around this week to see if there’s any news on the flat horses. There’s nothing major to report. Winker seems to have done well. Bouguereau has grown a lot more and he was a big horse anyway. Shawhill hasn’t grown as much as we would have liked. Max One Two Three has had a kick but she seems to be ok. All the 2yos are fine.
I tried to sell Baldovina in the December sale but she failed to sell – she was one of the last lots on the last day so not that surprising. I’ve decided to keep her and put her in foal – she has a decent page (by Tale of the Cat, Dam a group winner in France from a strong family) and although a little small she is a decent looker. Her career started ok but faded – I think she has ability but has lost the will. No reason why she shouldn’t be a producer.
I enjoyed reading the interview with Peter Jones in today’s RP. I met him a number of times over the years – he’s a good man and an intelligent man, and these signing off type interviews where senior industry figures can finally speak freely are generally good value. He was mildly critical of the racing industry (leaders generally too old or not commercial enough) and he had a pop at Peter Savill (abuses data to support his own arguments). He gave himself 7 out of 10 for his performance at the Tote. I think he did a decent enough job – if he had a fault it may be that he was too much of a nice guy, but there are worse faults to have than that.
I was rather less amused with the strangely lopsided Netprophet survey yesterday. Betfair fared poorly picking up both of the negative awards – undoubtedly commercially damaging and very upsetting for some executives in the company. I couldn’t help wondering if my negative piece on Alex Hankin had something to do with it – his survey suddenly appeared the week after my blog article. Was Al looking for a bit of revenge? If he was he has abused his journalistic privileges (not for the first time IMO) and there is a case to be answered.
Then again perhaps I’m imagining things – where are my pills nurse?