Nov 26th Update

Many Congratulations to Nicky for winning the Lifetime Achievement Award at the Equestrian Business Awards for all her hard work with her Happy Horse Retirement Home Well deserved!  How do you manage that and run the run the Festival Tipping competitions !  

We spent the past two days advertising Surrey Racing at Ascot’s ownership day, it was great to see so many of our racehorse owners there who said hello and kept us refuelled !  It was also nice that Alan King came over and asked how Surrey Lord was (he was the underbidder). He’s a trainer that we would certainly like to be training a Surrey Racing horse or two in the future.  

Following on from last week’s thought provoking newsletter, it was interesting to see the growth of the micro share racing clubs in attendance at Ascot, and whilst some companies run that business well (The Owners Group) there are others where you feel greater regulation is needed. A stand near us was selling 4000 ‘shares’ for £45 (£180k total) for a horse that it leased! You can’t buy a share in a horse that is leased!  As one trainer said to us on Friday evening, it feels like another ‘Ponzi’ scheme.  The BHA, were in attendance, mentioned that three such clubs had gone under this season and they were concerned at the way some business’s were run, so they are trying to push through regulation in 2024. Hopefully micro share outfits are scrutinised in greater detail than those fully established syndicates. 

The other worrying aspect was the number of horses running at Ascot on Saturday, a card that featured two graded races but those two races  attracted only 9 runners (and one of them refused to race!). There are only 47 horses trained in the UK with a rating over 150, there’s just not the numbers to fill the races that are put on. The industry has a supply crises here but the latest round of stallion price rises was mind boggling which surely won’t help the cause, especially with the dire prize money on offer here. It’s yet another area that the BHA need to take a long hard look at, their ‘to do’ list is certainly long! It will be interesting to see what sort of prices tomorrow’s Tatts December Yearling sale produces.  

Surrey Force is still on course for a debut in December. Interestingly Kevin is looking at three races, one on the 5th at Lingfield which is a restricted novice race (Band C + D only) so on paper should be easier, but the downside is it’s at Lingfield which is not the ideal course to debut at. The next day is an open novice at Kempton which is likely to contain a few very expensive and well bred horses, not a problem if the aim is to give Surrey Force a racecourse education, but we’re not sure that’s what Kevin is thinking because he’s also looking at a restricted novice at Kempton on the 13th, which ticks more boxes especially if he’s going to try to win the race.  

Two others that the syndicate owners hope to see on the track soon are Surrey Quest and Surrey Fortune. Quest is recovering well from his minor op and starting to slowly work again. He was pretty fit beforehand so we’d expect to see him racing in about 5-6 weeks time. We are hoping that the handicapper noticed that Quest’s winning form probably wasn’t as good as he first thought with the 2nd and 4th underperforming last week and hopefully giving us a couple of pounds back. Surrey Fortune has just had a couple of easier weeks due to some minor growing pains but Billy is now pushing on with him. He looks really well and the plan is to have a racecourse gallop at Towcester in 2 weeks time, assess where he is at and get a better idea of when he will run in his first bumper.  

Surrey Shadow is now back ‘jogging’ and looks a very imposing young horse. Tom’s plan with him was to build him up through December and January, then give him a small break in February before a turf debut (possibly at Doncaster) at the end of March, we haven’t heard anything to the contrary.   

The other horses are either recuperating or enjoying a rugged up holiday!  

Possible races and events

2023 
December
Tuesday 5th - Surrey Force - Lingfield
Wednesday 6th – Surrey Force - Kempton
Wednesday 13th – Surrey Force - Kempton