04/09/22

We obviously work very hard every day of the year to give the horses the best possible life and getting winning results on the racecourse is the ultimate aim. There are times though when these things are put into perspective and this weekend was definitely one of them with a couple of very sad pieces of news in the horseracing world.
Firstly, top Irish National Hunt trainer Henry de Bromhead tragically lost his 13-year old son in a fall during a pony race in Ireland on Saturday. I cannot bear to think how hard it has been for the family and I can only offer my condolences to them all and hope that they can pull through.
Closer to home, popular stable lad Barry Baxby suffered a heart attack at Hamilton racecourse last week and then died over the weekend. He had traveled horses for many years with Luca Cumani and had latterly been a horse box driver for Newmarket Equine Transport. He was a funny and popular man who will be much missed.

The thing with horses though is that you still have to get up the next day no matter how hard things are as they still need looking after and that kind of helps you through the bad times too.
I declared Mrs Meader for Leicester on Tuesday but the wet weather forecast seems to be drying up all the time and she'll need a fair bit of rain to arrive before then if she is to run. It's a shame as she is ready to win when she can get some soft ground again.

Smokey Malone is on the al-weather on Thursday at Chelmsford so there's no ground worries but the only question mark is the 1m5f distance. Dylan has been wanting me to run him over a bit further as he thinks he'll do well over it so we'll find out this time!

The other entry for the week comes at Chelmsford again on Saturday with course regular Engrave. She has been running well recently in a higher grade and gets to drop back into 0-60 company this time so hopefully that is enough to see her get her head in front again.