Merry Berry!

Jumping action has returned and it was nice to grab a winner at Worcester last week courtesy of Poisoned Berry winning the mare’s bumper.  She had shown good form previously for Fergal O’Brien and we purchased her in May so it was nice for her to win on her stable debut.  She was up there with the pace throughout and battled on gamely to hold off a well backed favourite.  She is not over big but has a good attitude which will stand her in good stead for the future.  She will go hurdling sooner rather than later.  For N Against also ran well at Worcester to finish second in the chase, he could be turned out again quickly and has an entry at Bangor on Friday.  The slight disappointment of the day was Citrus who was also making his Pond House debut.  Thankfully he seems fine since the race and I am sure we will see a much better performance next time, maybe on some softer ground as he does have some nice bumper form in France.

On Sunday Gabrial The Great ran well to finish third in a novice chase at Southwell and Purple N Gold ran another solid race to finish fourth in the feature handicap chase.  He is such a consistent performer and unfortunately as a consequence he gets no respite from the handicapper.  He seems to stay really well these days and we might try stepping him up in trip again at some point.

Looking ahead to this week we have a few meetings and are likely to have some runners.  Amigo is an intended runner at Worcester on Wednesday and could be joined by the likes of Skylander, Perspicace and Port Navas although they do hold entries elsewhere.  On Thursday the action moves to Fontwell where our entries include Thunder Pass and Nice Thoughts.  Standing Ovation and Houston Dynimo are possibles for Startford on Thursday.  Newton Abbot have their feature meeting of the year on Saturday and we have a few entries which include Purple N Gold, Ennistown and Unanimite in the valuable handicap hurdle.  The action comes from Worcester on Sunday and new French recruit Dauphine Ereine could make her British debut.  She is actually a ½ sister to stable star Dynaste.  She has made a good start to her career in France, she is only a four year old and it will be interesting to see how she gets on over the English fences.

Just a quick update for those of you who may have seen David Noonan take a nasty fall at Stratford on Thursday.  He is having a few easy days and should return to action towards the end of the week.  Gerry Supple and Craig Wylie returned from Dingle in reasonable shape and although now off alcohol for a few days they are counting down the days to next year’s pilgrimage already!

Away from the racing I survived my golf!  I played in the Jim Old Charity golf day at Malborough last week.  I was kindly invited to be in a team by former owner John Dale along with his son Adam and myself and Ashley Farrant.  We enjoyed the round but unfortunately we did not win any prizes!  It was a good day which hopefully raised a nice amount of money for charity.  Also on the sporting front we had a family game of ten-pin bowling over the weekend and unfortunately I did not win this either!  Daughter Sophie who is only four took the honours - I must get practicing!  Thankfully the British athletes are doing much better than me in Rio!  I am really enjoying the action from the Olympics in all the sports and fingers crossed the equestrian teams and everyone competing can continue to do well this week.