13th November 2017

13th November 2017

Last week saw two winners sent out from the yard. Rock Island Line was the first, he won really nicely at Wolverhampton under former champion jockey Paul Hanagan. "Rocky" was bred by his owner Jill Gittus out of a mare my Dad trained called Diablo Dancer, it takes a lot of patience to breed a racehorse and breeding a winning one is not an easy thing to do for a breeder with only one broodmare, this made his win extra special. He is on a holiday now and will return next flat season.

Mr Snoozy was the second winner, he has been off the track for seven months after an operation on his back after his win at Wetherby in April. It was the first time Henry Brooke has ridden him and hopefully its a partnership that will see a few more winners this season. He has now won nearly £40,000 in prize money for his owner Tom Heseltine, not bad for a horse we got for free! Below is a picture of him in the winners enclosure at Market Rasen.

It's fair to say that we were ready for a winner or two, the last couple of months have been tough with the horses not in great form, we have now determined the cause of the problems and hope things will continue to go well.

 In other news next year we have a big project which I am really exited about, we are having a new gallop put in, our current gallop is fine but the new one I think will really help the flat horses, especially the two year olds as it will be a much easier surface and should put more empahsis on speed rather than stamina during training.  We are just starting to get the materials stock piled and the work will start early next year.