Weekly Update - 30th May
It’s always good to give a very warm welcome to new syndicate owners and we have had a few this week, joining as owners of the 2022 German Derby winner! We can’t wait to catch up with them at the racecourse and we know they will all love being an owner with Surrey Racing.
Talking of Surrey Knight, it does seem that Charlie thinks he’s a little more forward, especially after the way he took the harder grass gallop in his stride last weekend. Charlie hopes he can get 3 runs out of him this year and is earmarking the first in September. As you know, we are very happy with Knight and will be putting the price up to £5500 per 7.5% share from June 1st. This is a reflection of how well he is progressing, his half sister now has black type and in fairness to the current owners, who took a greater risk by buying early and have been paying monthly fees. Obviously, if you are interested in Knight, please confirm before the 1st and we will hold the current price for you. We would be happy to arrange a visit to see Knight and meet Charlie should you wish to do so before committing.
A busy week just gone with Surrey Quest making his debut at Warwick last Wednesday. It was great to see a crowd at the racecourse, and we managed to get 10 tickets for the racehorse syndicate owners who witnessed Quest making a very promising debut, running on nicely for 2nd despite being pretty green and beaten by a horse that is very highly rated. Nicky said Quest was 100% the following morning and was delighted but not surprised by his performance. He reaffirmed that Russian Ruler, who will be top class, was just a bit sharper than Quest at the moment. Quest will now take a break and Nicky expects him to thrive over the summer. He will go back to Seven Barrows mid/end July and straight to hurdles in early October. We should look forward to next season!
We tried to buy a breeze up horse this week but the one we bid for went for about £75k over our budget! The average prices at the Arqana sale was £115k, so we will try again at the Goresbridge sale in Newmarket on Thursday. This is the last breeze sale up of the year and whilst we would like to buy a 2 year old to ensure we have a new three year old running next year (in addition to Mist and Knight) will stick to our principles and only buy if we can find the right horse. If we don’t, we will have to wait for the yearling sales in October.
The following day we had the 2nd Annual Surrey Racing Golf Day. What a beautiful day at Silvermere in glorious sunshine – Hughie and George both played which was great, and I think all involved had a very pleasant day, congratulations to the winning players who won the various awards on offer.
Hughie gave us an update on Surrey Gold, who is very well and set for Royal Ascot. We do need a bit of luck with the ballot and obviously the softer the better and it’s fair to say that even if the going is good, there does tend to be different types of good going!
George updated us on our two at Robin’s Farm. Surrey Princess has understandably taken a while to get over her tough race in the heavy ground at Salisbury but she’s in great spirits. There aren’t too many option for her over the coming weeks so she’ll probably run at Newbury on the 10th, although that will be a tough race. We will still be open minded about other fixtures so expect entries for her this week (to run week after).
Surrey Mist is also well, he’ll have another racecourse gallop soon, George will let us know and if any of the owners want to come and watch that they can – as George said at the golf, it will be a lot easier to get in to watch a racecourse gallop than get tickets for Royal Ascot! He’s still on course for a debut over 7 furlongs at the end of June.
Surrey Pride is back to being himself after the rigours of York. We’ve had a bit of a rethink though on plans for him. We still think the ultimate near term goal should be the John Smiths Cup at York on July 10th, but to stand any chance we’d need to be one of the bottom weights. We would have got in 8 of the last 9 off our current weight so we think we should miss the other races and go straight to York and Joe (who is in red hot form) has no issues in having Pride fit and ready. We feel it’s going to really difficult to win 3 top handicaps in a row – not many horses do that at the high level. We will know on June 5th what kind of chance we have of getting in – if we are miles away we still have Royal Ascot as a fall back option.
Have a great week ahead and enjoy summer finally arriving!
Entries and Other Possible Plans/Events 2021
June
Thursday 10th – Surrey Princess - Newbury
Thursday 17th – Surrey Gold – Royal Ascot (King George V Handicap)
Friday 18th – Surrey Pride – Royal Ascot (Duke of Edinburgh Handicap)
July
Saturday 10th – Surrey Pride – York (John Smiths Cup)
August
Saturday 14th – Surrey Gold – York (Melrose Handicap)
September
Saturday 11th – Surrey Gold – Doncaster (St Leger)
October
Saturday 2nd – Surrey Mist – Paris Longchamp (Arqana Sales Race)