As you saw from the great pictures Hayley posted of our morning on Saturday’s blog it seemed like a typical, calm but busy Saturday morning with several owners present. With our main jockeys, Joey Haynes, Graeme Lee and Shane Grey usually riding out on different days for us, Saturday was the turn of Shane Grey, Stevie Parkin (affectionately known as “Parkie”) was also present- as he is most Saturdays throughout the season. Sadly Jimmy Bleasdale was missing in action after a fall the previous Wednesday morning when the two year old colt he was leading Graeme Lee on up the grass gallop ducked out unexpectedly, firing Jimmy into the ground. Jimmy sat in the tack room for a while afterwards with his head tilted to one side and happily announced with breath-taking understatement that he “would be fine once the pain had stopped”.
As if that wasn’t excitement enough for us, on Saturday Red Charmer decided to head-butt Parkie when picking grass in the parade ring with such a force Parkie was knocked over and ended up under Red Charmers legs, it happened so fast we had to re-watch it on the CCTV afterwards to really see what had happened but, with typical racing related “black humour” everyone fell about laughing. Fortunately Parkie was unhurt.
After an eventful Saturday we were glad to go racing to Thirsk yesterday with Arnold and Mimics Memory. Arnold was badly drawn in stall one but was given a fantastic ride by Joey Haynes whose instructions were to "get him settled above all else" and "ride the race from there", he ran a cracker and was beaten only a neck having hit the front a bit too soon. A big raw and still inexperienced three year old, he didn’t quite know what to do in front and can only improve for experience.
Mimics ran another solid race when fourth but found the ground too firm for her but at least she settled well for Shane who gets on really well with her, she should now get the extra furlong we are keen to run her over. A bit of juice in the ground will really help her chances too.
At Beverly today the ground was too quick for the lovely Toboggans fire while Red Charmer was disappointing on ground he loves.