Lockdown Update
Halfway through the month already, cases are dropping, we are now close to hitting 350 000 vaccinations a day, some reasons for optimism although unfortunately we are not out of the woods yet.
Hughie said Surrey Gold is looking great although he said it was hard to tell if he’s bulked out and matured, mainly because he sees the horse daily and it’s hard to notice discernible differences. The plan remains a comeback in March.
Surrey Knight has had an easy few weeks over Christmas and New Year and Charlie tends to ease his two-year-olds back in to full work gently through January. He did a couple of hack canters at the end of last week and will do more of the same through this week before Charlie really start to pick things up. Through February Charlie will start to work out which ones are going to make two-year-olds and are ready to take harder training and which ones might need backing off and a bit of a holiday. Although we suggested it would be a surprise that he could be early, it appears now he will probably fall into the latter category as it appears he’s hitting a growth spurt.
For those interested in Surrey Thunder, he had his first step back on a racecourse last week in Melbourne, a 4f trial which he came through without issue. He will have a second trial this week on Friday (22nd) and then Chris Waller will be looking for a race for him in early February. The target, if all goes well, will be the Chairman's Handicap (a Group 2 handicap horse race for horses three years old and older, held over 2600 metres at Randwick Racecourse, in April with a A$300,000 purse) at the Sydney’s Autumn carnival.
The jumpers – and what an awful day for Dan (and Philip Hobbs) yesterday with two of Dan’s losing their lives on the racetrack including his Cheltenham winner Mohaayed. It does show how precarious horse racing, especially NH, is and why those in horse racing syndicates must celebrate the good times because there are plenty of down times. We’ve passed on our best wishes to Dan and the team, we still plan to offer race horse shares in a horse with the Skelton’s at some point in the future.
it was good to see Gran Luna appear in Nicky’s Unibet blog, and also good to read that what Nicky tells us is the same as what he writes! He wrote “Gran Luna is back to full work and I shall be looking for a race very soon for her before heading to Cheltenham”. Gran Luna did gallop “very nicely” with two decent horses (he didn’t say who) early this week and backed that up again yesterday. Yesterday’s gallop was on heavy ground and she worked pretty hard without any noise. She will be entered into a slightly easier novice race at the end of January / early February (maybe Huntingdon or Doncaster on the 29th). She will carry a penalty for the class 2 win but it’s all about getting her back on track, jumping well and competing without any wind issues. All going well, after that will be a tougher class 1 race later in February before hopefully a crack at the Mares Novice at Cheltenham (40-1 Bet365).
Nicky is also happy with Surrey Quest, Jane had been doing loads of cantering with him and Nicky is pleased with his progress, but for the past week or so he’s just been given time to settle in to his new surroundings, taking it very easy, However, from this week Nicky will kick on with him and he’ll be in full training mode. As was always the plan, he should be ready for a bumper in March.
Stay safe!