13/08/23

Horses always seem to know when people need a pick-up and Stintino Sunset gave us the one we needed when winning the first race of her career at Leicester on Sunday. 
Both her owner/breeders Steve and Tony haven't had the best of times recently so seeing their homebred filly win will give them a massive boost and they certainly deserve it having raced this filly's half brother and sister before with no success.
Stintino was stepping up to 1m2f for the first time and had the assistance of Hollie Doyle fresh from riding a double at the Shergar Cup the day before. The pair sat well off the fast early pace and still had lots to do at the top of the straight but Hollie timed the run perfectly and the pair came home cosy winners inside the final 100 yards.
This can hopefully be the first of many wins for the filly now that she has her confidence and can give her owners lots more fun.

Stintino Sunset, Hollie and Sarah

Another horse who has given her owners lots of cheer this season is Heer's Sadie and she went to Brighton on Thursday looking to make it a hat-trick of wins but the slow early pace went against her and she ran on to finish second. She has found a new lease of life at Brighton recently so can hopefully win again soon.

We are back racing on Monday with a pair of runners at Kempton for owner Carol Bushnell.
Hurricane Kiko bounced back to form with a second place at Chelmsford last time and he does seem a better horse on the all-weather than the turf. Hopefully he's not just a Chelmsford specialist, as that's where his only win came at, and he can do the same at Kempton.
Accompanying him will be Silver Shamrock who will be making her racecourse debut. She has taken until now to mature physically but she is ready for a run and it'll be a good experience for her.

On Wednesday we'll be at Yarmouth with Queen's Company. She won at the track earlier in the season and then the slow pace counted against her at Doncaster and Brighton since then. She obviously likes Yarmouth so fingers crossed she can settle early on and run another good race by the seaside.

I'm looking forward to getting Zanagor back on track at Wolverhampton on Friday. She is a big filly who had a run at the back end of last  year for experience. She had a small hold up in the spring which has kept her off the track until now but she is in good health and ready to run again. I imagine she'll need the race to blow the cobwebs away but she is a filly to watch for the future.