I have received a few emails and text asking when St Swithin's day is, well if you didn't know it is in July. I'd rather think Charlie is referring to the significance of the day rather than my dour personality. However, I maybe wrong.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/horseracing/9860913/Point-to-Pointing-reminded-me-why-I-love-racing-so-much.html
We manged to get some work into Vazaro Delafayette, Major Martin, Knight of Noir, Max Ward, Cestus, Grape Tree Road Gelding, and Dark Tartan the rest all had routine canters. The gallop was perfect late morning and we held the workers back until last. At 12.30pm the snow started to fall again and by 2.30pm I was on the roof cleaning the satellite dish as the receiver had been covered. I am sick of this weather and am getting very short tempered by it. I am unlikely to smile until the next St Swithin's day at this rate!
Carl Evans has written a nice piece about what we are trying to achieve on the Brightwells website.
http://www.brightwells.com/Libraries/Cheltenham_Results/Bloodstock_News_Update_11_02_13_1.pdf
I had a very interesting conversation with an Irish agent last night. The conclusion was an English p2p winner with a decent page, (well breed) and trained properly has every right to be as good, if not better than an Irish p2p winner. The p2ps in Ireland as we all know are hugely competitive and have much more strength in depth than ours. However, there is a flip side to Irish p2ps. The trainers are having to train their horses so hard that they more often than not need a year off to recover and some never do. Hence so many do not train on, of course horses such as Simonsig, Denman and many others keep their sport in the spotlight, as well as their exceptional marketing. But, there are many horses fetching 200,000 GBPs or more at the sales than never win another race - no one chooses to remember these! We are never going to compete with the Irish, but I do believe that top class horses will continue to be produced in English p2ps. See More Business, Cool Dawn, Teeton Mill, Mr Frisk etc etc Billy Biscuit and Full Shift!!!.............It is also apparent that agents buying horses in France don't mind if a horse has had 4 or 5 runs as long as they are progressive, why is it that when buying horses out of English and Irish p2ps the horse has to have delivered the goods 1st time of asking.
