No racing - but workrate doesn’t slow down
It’s actually a very difficult time right now. With the snow and frost playing havoc with racing again, I’ve been ringing all my owners to wish them a Happy Christmas, but also to keep them up to date. A lot of them might have plans made to travel to Leopardstown or Limerick but that situation is changing all the time.
It is very difficult to work out and to be honest, I’m not sure what I’m going to do. That’s what I’ve been telling the owners. I’m confused.com. In fact I’m in total confusion, not just partial.
There’s a new list of races and entries now but the problem is that there are so many entries because people don’t know what races might survive and what won’t.
We will definitely try to get to The Curragh on Christmas Day to work… and St Stephen’s Day as well. We’ll go whatever day we can but it’s covered in snow over there at the moment.
We actually aren’t too bad in that regard. The frost has done the damage at Commonstown and we were minus 13 degrees on Wednesday night.
We’ve been in the indoor school most of the week although we made it to The Curragh on Monday and Tuesday. Tuesday gave us a bit of a fright though as the snow was falling very heavily. The work riders were frozen afterwards and it took a lot of hot coffee to get them going again.
We actually had someone out on our gallops all Monday night to try to have them right for Tuesday but Slavic’s work on the tractor was to no avail. It still froze and all they could do was trot on it.
Having the indoor school has been invaluable at this time but we made a grave error on Wednesday when we watered it and of course it was frozen solid yesterday morning. So we had to have it rotavated and hopefully it will be okay tomorrow after we rotavate it again.
Fortunately though, we’ve been able to get everything out and cantering for about 25 minutes. I’ll certainly have the best balanced horses in the business by the time this is all done!
I can’t complain though as at least my last two runners were winners. I was thrilled with Oscars Well in Navan. I know the favourite came out of the race but he did it well. In fact he couldn’t have done it any easier.
He’ll go to Leopardstown now next month, probably for the Grade 2 two-and-a-half mile race. He seems to be improving still so he’s one to look forward to.
It was great for Kate to get a winner in the bumper later, on True Character. She’d had a bit of run of seconds and thirds so I was delighted for her. True Character did it very easy too although it probably wasn’t the greatest of bumpers. He had improved so was entitled to win it. He’ll probably run in a winners’ bumper before going hurdling. He jumps well at home so we’ll see how that goes.
As for the presents and Christmas dinner, I’m getting there. I have the turkey and the goose and the hams are cooked. There are a few other things to do but we’re slowly getting organised.
We’ll have family and friends over for dinner in the afternoon after we’ve worked the horses in the morning. My son James, his wife Zoe and their four children have arrived from France, while my sister-in-law and her two boys will be here. There’ll be my daughter Emma and her husband Richie and their son Jack, as well as my friend Sue Doyle and Belle.
I’m looking forward to the day and there’s so much food I’ll probably be the size of a football after it. But it’s one day in the year and when we get working and racing soon so it won’t take long to get ride of it.
Happy Christmas to everyone and hopefully by next week, we’ll be talking about an interesting Leopardstown
