Sea Presenting joins the stable.
The big news of the week is the arrival of a new NH horse who will be running in a bumper very early in the new year. There will be one or two shares available if anyone wishes, we will be arranging a visit to Toby’s one morning in 2-3 weeks’ time.
As you know, following the injury to Surrey Fortune, we informed the owners of our willingness to buy a new horse and transfer the Surrey Fortine shares. The brief to Toby was clear in that we were not interested in simply buying a replacement for Fortune but wanted a horse with similar potential and scope to give us a real chance of “Saturday racing”. After a busy couple of weeks, we are delighted to announce the purchase of Sea Presenting, a 4-year-old filly who finished an impressive third in a strong Irish Point to Point on 26th October. See the race in the link.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7MwlDuxnhQ
The horse was bought from the Monbeg Stables in Ireland, a farm that has produced amongst other top horses, the King George VI winner Bravemansgame, Welsh National winner Monbeg Dude and Cheltenham Festival winner Topofthegame. Both Toby and his agent J.D. Moore know the farm well, an important factor when buying young horses. Toby also insisted on a comprehensive vet inspection before buying, which she passed with flying colours. Probably the only negative about the horses is that we can’t change the name to incorporate “Surrey” because she has run in a PtP race. As you can see from the photograph, she is a beautiful looking filly and with See the Stars and Presenting (hence the name!) on the page, we believe we have given ourselves every chance. Below are the thoughts of Toby, which explain why he is so positive about the filly:
“I loved her sturdy attitude; she jumps well and despite running very green she showed a very promising level of ability. There is a fantastic program for mares now, so there are great opportunities for exciting mares like this”
She will need a week or two to settle in but she should be making her full racecourse debut in early January. We are obviously bitterly disappointed about the injury to Fortune and despite the financial impact for Surrey Racing, we are very excited to have secured Sea Presenting. As Toby mentions above, the mares programme is good and there is always the possibility of retained value at the end of her career, particularly if she can secure black type.
Stablemate Surrey Lord is very well after his first appearance on a racetrack and is now back on the gallops. Toby has been looking at bumpers between November 27th to December 12th where there are plenty of options on galloping tracks. Ground is a bit of an issue right now as we are lacking rain and wouldn’t want Lord to run on quick ground so we will see how he is, how the weather is and then try to pin down a couple of dates later in the month.
Unfortunately, the ground may scupper Surrey Quest’s plans, who will be entered at Cheltenham to run next Sunday, 17th, in the 2.55, the Holland Cooper Premier Handicap over nearly 3.5 miles. We’ve never had a runner at Cheltenham, there have been plenty of entries, but circumstances have prevented us taking part so hopefully the watering is sufficient as it’s the perfect race for Quest’s return, a prize pool of £70k and live on ITV! Options if he doesn’t run next Sunday are the following Saturday (23rd) at Haydock, 30th at Newcastle, 7th at Sandown or 8th at Kelso.
Not much news re the flat horses, Surrey Mist is leaving Kevin’s tomorrow to join an eventing team in Sussex where he will be retrained for dressage which is fantastic news. He’ll still need the winter to recover from his injury but can be ridden again around Easter time. We do plan to visit Chantilly again in December to see Surrey Etoile and watch Surrey Noir race so if any syndicate owners are coming let us know.
With the NH season now in full swing, something that may be of interest, At The Races and Sky Sports Racing have announced a raft of new horse race data, made available free for users on attheraces.com. Developed with race tracking data partner, Total Performance Data, the service provides new insight to help communicate the dynamics of the sport in a way can be easily understood. Metrics for each horse include ‘Top Speed’, ‘Final Speed’ and ‘0-30mph time’. For Jumps races, Attheraces.com can now publish data showing exactly how much speed each horse in a race lost travelling over fences and hurdles. There are also ‘Jumping Speed Lost’ figures which are published for the early, middle, and late portions of each race. This leads to a ‘Jumping Fluency Grade’ (A-E), which can quickly gauge how well a horse jumped in a race.
Good luck to Surrey Quest and his connections if he runs at Cheltenham next Sunday – look out for the colours on ITV !
Possible races and events.
November
Saturday 16th - Breakfast and visit to see Surrey King
Sunday 17th – Surrey Quest - Cheltenham 2.55pm
December
Tuesday 10th – Surrey Noir - Chantilly
Saturday 28th – Surrey Quest - Newbury