Mamlook To Miss Ces

Chester Cup winner Mamlook will miss the Cesarewitch at Newmarket

It was the first forfeit stage today (Tuesday) for next month's Cesarewitch at Newmarket and unfortunately we have had to scratch Mamlook.  The seven year old son of Key Of Luck went for a racecourse gallop last week and came back with a bit of heat in a fore leg and the vet has confirmed that he is going to need some time off.  Mamlook has twice finished in the frame in the Cesarewitch (third behind Caracciola in 2008, and second behind Darley Sun in 2009), as well as landing the fiercely competitive Chester Cup in 2010, four hurdle races (including the Grade 2 Victor Chandler Handicap Hurdle at Ascot) and a couple of chases.  He has been a wonderful servant and this setback is a blow to everyone concerned, but he will be given everything he needs to assist his recuperation and get him back onto the racecourse.  His absence means that we now have three remaining in next month's Cesarewitch - Big Occasion, Beyond and Tasheba.

It’s been a quiet week on the whole, in no small part due to the fact that conditional jockey Conor O’Farrell has been spending a few days on the island of Ibiza with some of his counterparts from the weighing room!  I doubt very much whether he has seen much of the daylight, and I must admit to feeling more than just a little sorry for the inhabitants of the Spanish island – a sentiment that I echoed on Twitter, although I was a little surprised to see that it made “Tweet of the day” in the Racing Post…it must have been a quiet day!

Talking of travellers, I was pleased to welcome my mum and dad back from China on Sunday evening.  They have been out visiting the Far East for the last couple of weeks and I must admit that I didn’t think dad was going to enjoy it at all…he had been in touch with former jump jockey Mark Richards who is now manager of the Racing Club at the Hong Kong Jockey Club.  Dad is notoriously tricky when it comes to food and I get the impression that Mark implied that he would be lucky to eat at all during his stay and would be surviving on a staple diet of digestive biscuits!  Anyway, I am pleased to say that he did eat and they both enjoyed their stay – apparently it is a real eye opener and their technical wizardry astonished them.

Although the routine has kept going very much as normal, I have missed having some jump racing on but the good news is that there is light at the end of the tunnel!  Today we made six entries for Plumpton and seven for Uttoxeter (both Sunday meetings) so hopefully we will have a few runners when racing resumes – for the latest on the stable runners keep checking back with Chester’s Daily Chat.

In the meantime I have a couple of pictures to share with you from the gallops.  They are of Cheltenham Festival winner Great Endeavour, and one that is yet to make his debut for the yard, bumper placed Otterburn.

  
Above left: Great Endeavour and right: Otterburn

Great Endeavour has been in for a few weeks now and as you can see from the photograph, he looks a picture and is progressing nicely – he could have a race like the Paddy Power Gold Cup at Cheltenham in November as an early season objective.  Otterburn has had just a couple of starts up north in bumpers and boasts some useful form – I am pleased with his progress and he is a nice prospect to have in the yard.

With plenty of horses in and coming along nicely there is plenty to look forward to this coming season, although in the short term, I just can’t wait to be back racing again this weekend!