28/08/22

Queen's Company bounced back to form with a great second place today at Yarmouth which led me to look at how many seconds we have had this year as it seemed like a lot! Remarkably we have had 21 seconds places from 96 runners in 2022 - almost a quarter of our runners have finished second. As annoying as it is, it just goes to show how well the horses have been running all year and we've had a good few winners as well so things could be worse!

It comes on the back of a second place finish from Fen Tiger at Lingfield on Wednesday, the same day The Mouse King finished third at Kempton. We had to run Mouse quickly after his seven length win at Southwell the week before due to an imminent rise in the handicap of 13lbs. The fact he was beaten this time under a 6lb penalty shows that the rise is way too big and, after emailing the handicapper to reassess it, he is putting him up 10lbs now. Time will tell if that's a bit high but at least we got a little bit back.

Hopefully there's a few more good results to come this week with a handful of entries.
Starting on Tuesday we will be at Ripon with two-year old Three Beauz. She disappointed last time for no particular reason after a promising debut so she needs to bounce back and would be in with a chance if she could.

Heer's Sadie has been waiting for some good ground to run on and, typically, now it's here there are no suitable turf races for her so she's the all-weather at Southwell on Wednesday. She's in flying form and is well handicapped now so I expect her to pop up with a win when things fall her way.

The last entry for the week comes at Haydock on Thursday. Mrs Meader needs a bit of cut in the ground so we'll only be making the long trip west if the ground doesn't dry out too much. She ran a great race behind an improving three-year old last time and should go well.