- Monday, 30 March 2020 14:11
- Written by David Pipe
Great Tempo & Little Red Lion at Grass
I have just completed two weeks in self-isolation after Leanne had shown some symptoms of the Coronavirus. Thankfully she is completely fine again now and enjoying teaching the kids at home!! It was my first morning back on the yard and it felt good to have a certain sense of normality even though things are far from ‘normal’ at the moment.
Current Situation
We have about 25 horses ‘ticking’ over on the gallops at the moment while we await to see what may happen to racing in the coming weeks. The majority of the ‘winter’ horses are now winding down and on their holidays. Although the days have been nice recently it is still pretty chilly and we have to be reminded that we are only still in March and there has been snow in April before! The horses being let down are going on the horse walker daily combined with daytime's out munching grass in the play pens and then in stables at night. Hopefully it will start warming up soon and we will get some nice spring grass coming through.
Some of those who we have been riding still include the likes of our bumper horses Israel Champ, Panic Attack and Martinhal who have been doing some jumping practice before we turn them away. I am delighted that has all gone well, in fact Tom Scu and David Noonan were here this morning jumping over the hurdles and that will now be it for them until the Autumn. All were very good and I am very excited as I have a lovely team of young novice hurdlers to look forward to next winter.
Planning Ahead
In the short term it is good to hear some plans are being put into place for the possible resumption of racing at the beginning of May. While it does seem a long way off happening at the moment we need to be ready for whenever the government allows racing to re-start in some form. It seems that three regional centres of racing could be a way to re-introduce racing while hopefully minimising any impact on the NHS. A key element of this also is to reduce the movements and travel of participants to as minimal as possible. This would involve just using a racecourse or racecourses in the South, in the Midlands and in the North to hold consecutive fixtures over a sustained period up to a week at a time. The focus is on racecourses with hotels attached to them with the exception of Newmarket which is obviously a large training centre with everything close by anyway.
Racing behind closed doors would be the plan with talks taking place to use private ambulances and retired doctors. Reducing the field size limits is also under consideration along with only having experienced jockeys riding to help boost safety measures. Although there is no mention of jumping anywhere at the moment I think we have to put things into perspective and I am right behind the pro-active approach. If we re-introduce some racing, under whatever restrictions as soon as it is deemed possible, it is a stepping stone in the right direction. It is very important for our sport and our industry as a whole and it would be a welcome boost in difficult times. I think we all realise we are in this for the long haul and while the health of the nation must come first we do have to try and find ways of returning to normality in the safest way possible when appropriate.
Keeping Occupied
So while self-isolating at Pond House I have probably become fitter than ever! I have joined the kids in following Joe Wicks’ PE workouts and have been tuning my football skills with Jack who loves playing in goal. Other lessons I have left to Leanne, team work I say!
Key Moments, Horses & People
Over the coming weeks while there is no racing in the Daily Blog we will be taking a look back at some key horse, people and moments from Pond House over the years. On Saturday we featured Madison Du Berlais which was a suggestion from regular reader David Brooks and on Sunday, secretary Gemma told of one of her fond memories, Maximize winning the 2004 Kim Muir at the Cheltenham Festival with brother Darren in the saddle. If anyone has any stories of suggestions they would like to share with us please feel free to get in touch. Email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. and we will do our best to include them.
Emoji Quiz
These are tough times for everyone and with no racing it has meant we have had to furlough some staff temporarily. I have a great team who have been very understanding but we are all very much looking forward to getting back to ‘it’ when we can. To keep spirits up and keep everyone involved with what is going on we have set up a yard what’s App group and while a lot of the content is not printable, one of our assistants Ali Galliers-Pratt set a yard emoji competition for everyone yesterday. I thought I would share it as I thought it was pretty good – can you guess some of the Pond House horses, past and present, some are better known than others, from the emoji clues below. If anyone wants to send in their answers please feel free – from the winning entries we will randomly select a winner to win a David Pipe Racing mug! Take care every, stay home and stay safe.
