A Snowy Update
Good evening from a snowy HQ – the last week of January but the first week of Surrey Racing’s 2021 campaign!
Gran Luna (weather permitting) is set for Wetherby on Thursday, the 3.45 race, a class 4 novice hurdle over 2 miles. She will carry a 10lb penalty for her class 2 win but that will be slightly offset by the 7lb mares allowance. This race is all about getting her back on track, jumping well and competing without any wind issues. All going well, after that we will aim for a tougher class 1 race later in February before hopefully a crack at the Mares Novice at Cheltenham .
Surrey Quest is now in full training and being pushed through his paces on the gallops, he won’t be doing any schooling though until later in the season as we will aim to start out in bumpers and he won’t be hurdling until next season. Nicky reports that he is well and settling in nicely.
Surrey Pride is back in training after his holiday. Joe said he looks so much better this year compared to last winter when he never really had a shining coat and Joe struggled to get him ready for Covid affected the start of the season. This year he’s glowing already, the break has done him the world of good and he’ll be ready for the Rosebery Handicap at Kempton at the end of March.
It is going to be interesting to see how Surrey Pride runs as a 4 year old. If we look back at our other horses who did well at 3, none of them really did much as 4 year old’s. Look at the stats of Surrey Hope (at 3 - 4 runs, 3 wins, 1 place, then at 4&5 11 runs, 1 win 3 places) Surrey Blaze (at 3 - 10 runs, 5 wins, 1 place, at 4 – 7 runs 0 wins, 4 places) and Surrey Thunder. Surrey Thunder has been out injured for most of his 4 year old career, he’s just come back with a trial last week, but he’s now injured again. Unfortunately the vet report has come through and he is going to require a lengthy spell out. He has a tendon injury in the opposite leg to his first injury which was the suspensory ligament and he’s going to require tendon rehab which is approximately 12 months from injury time to being back at the races. The horse racing syndicate in Australia have to make a decision whether to retire him or basically wait a year when he’ll be 6 to race again, a tough decision when they have already spent £300k to buy him from us.
There are never any guarantees in horse racing and it really does feel like the time to sell is when the horse is on the way up because the drop back down can be quite dramatic. I know when we sold Surrey Thunder everyone in the race horse syndicate had mixed emotions, he was a good horse and we thought he could maybe give us even better days at the races but with hindsight we definitely made the right decision to sell when we did, and that gave up the opportunity be involved in other race horse syndicates.
Surrey Knight has had an easy week last week because the weather was so miserable. Things will get more interesting through February as Charlie will increase the two-year-old’s work load however, this fella still looks immature and more of a back end two year old type so Charlie won’t be in no rush to push him too hard too early. He is very straight forward and apparently he’s been a pleasure to train so far.
No news from George re Surrey Princess and Surrey Mist as he’s in Bahrain this week wining and dining the good and great of the Bahrain Jockey Club! Tea with British Ambassador Roddy Drummond and his wife Yasmin at The British Embassy, Drinks at The Ritz Carlton with some prospective owners, followed by a delicious dinner at Monsoon, a Thai restaurant, with Shaikh Salman and his cousin Ibrahim. Sounds a tough trip !
We heard from Hughie this week that Surrey Gold is well, but he’s not looking to rush him at all and even suggests we won’t see him on the track until late April which we’re ok with, we didn’t expect him to have run 3 times already and win so we’ve already had our bonus!
Good luck to the ‘Big Mooners’ this week!