Racing Post

A trip to Ayr always gets my vote

While I enjoy all the tracks we get to visit in our job, if you asked me right now where is best to take an owner or someone who wants a day at the races, I would answer Ayr.

We’ve been lucky enough to have some good days there in the past, but win or lose, owners have always been fantastically well looked after when going there.

From a racing perspective it is a fair track with a long home straight, and although it is further than you might think to get there from ours – you are looking at about two and a half, to two and threequarter hours – it never feels like an imposition to go racing there.

That’s not to denigrate any of the other tracks either – my experiences across the board have been pretty positive, and we’ve been able to tick off a few more courses now that we’ve started venturing further south.

Two of our jumpers came back into work last week – My Macho Man and Ginger Pointe. They were part of my jumping group that were waiting for better ground, and they will be running again in about a month or so, depending on the better ground coming through.

Meanwhile we have a potential new jumper in our midst, as our ex-Irish filly Flash Bulb has been getting her eye in over hurdles at home.

It took her a little while to get the hang of things, but she is getting there now and could be running in the middle of next month, supposing her schooling continues to go in the right direction. She should definitely get a hurdles trip, being by Camelot and related to good stayers Duncan, Samuel and Gretchen on the dam’s side. Her winter all-weather campaign never really took off, but maybe her hurdling one might. You never know.

Our Flat brigade are back cantering again now, and I’m impressed with how they are looking, particularly Gweedore who, as you can see from the picture (bottom left) is really looking the part.

I am part of the way through clipping them all at the moment – Jackmeister Rudi (bottom right) got the treatment recently – and we have a strong team to go to war with when the summer season arrives.

One of our principal owners, Making Headway Racing, popped down at the weekend to see their horses and discuss plans – and it is all bubbling up nicely.

TRAINER INSIGHT

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2023-01-31T08:00:00.0000000Z

2023-01-31T08:00:00.0000000Z

https://racingpost.pressreader.com/article/282235194799397

Racing Post