Amy - Will be Riding in Wincanton Charity Race

Last week was very quiet on the racecourse for us and it will continue to be so this week with jumps racing still a little limited but things do start getting going a bit more next week.  We have had some rain at Pond House in the last few days but not nearly as much as some places around the country!  The flat meeting at Leicester On Monday was abandoned the day before due to waterlogging with 72mm of rain falling in a relatively short space of time and a lot of courses with fixtures coming up have had dramatic changes in going descriptions.  We made entries at Warwick for Tuesday the other day with the ground described as good to firm, I see this morning they have changed to good to soft following rain over the weekend and conditions will soften further with quite a bit more rain to come before racing.  We did need some rain but like with everything these days we seem to go from one extreme to the other!

This Week

We start the week with one runner at Sedgefield on Monday afternoon, Chemical Warfare.  He returns to chasing after finishing fourth over hurdles last time out.  He has had a fruitful summer and already has two chase wins to his name in 2024 and hopefully he can make it three today!  He shows a great attitude and is admirably consistent.  It is a long way to travel but it looks a good opportunity for him and it also means his owners who are based in the North can go and watch him run.

Our only other runners this week will be on Friday, if at all, at Worcester.  We have Micronormous entered in the 2m4f maiden hurdle and Mr Tambourine Man in the handicap hurdle over three miles.  Micronormous returned from a long time off the track to run very well at the course a couple of weeks ago and providing the ground in suitable she could run again.  We will see what the handicapper does to the rating of Mr Tambourine Man on Tuesday before making plans with him.  The weekend looks quiet with just the one jumps fixture at Market Rasen on Saturday but keep checking the Daily News on the website for the latest information on all that is going on at Pond House.

Gallop Maintenance

At home while the ‘winter’ horses are progressing nicely in their training we have topped up our woodchip gallop and are just finishing ‘turning over’ the sand on the Wexford Sand Gallop.  We use the sand a lot for the early work when horses return to galloping from a break.  It is slow, steady cantering to build up their fitness and then they do more speed work on the woodchip.  We hire a mini-digger, which works its way around the 3F gallop with the help of some manual digging as well!  This helps with the drainage and stops the sand compacting too much.  Once finished it is topped up with sand and we are all set for the winter months ahead!

Racing Welfare Keagan Kirkby Memorial Charity Race

Next month, on 27^th October, staff member Amy Clark will be taking part in the Keagan Kirkby Memorial Charity race at Wincanton in aid of Racing Welfare.  Amy is 18 years old and joined us full time in March.  She has ambitions of having a licence one day and this is the perfect way to get her first experience on the track while raising some money for a good cause.  She has never done anything like this before but is getting fit and having some jockey coaching from Rodi Greene.  The race is being run in honour of Keagan, who was a member of staff for Paul Nicholls but sadly passed away earlier this year following a fall in a point to point.  The whole day at Wincanton is being run in his memory with various events going on and it is great to be supporting it in a small way.  I know the Racing Welfare team has been working very closely with Keagan’s family, friends and all the team at the Paul Nicholls yard and they do a great job supporting everyone that is associated with racing. Amy has made a great start in her fundraising effort but would welcome any donations through the link on the link below if you would like to support her;

https://racingwelfare.enthuse.com/pf/amy-clark

Characters in Racing

One thing I enjoy as part of my job is getting to meet so many interesting people from all walks of life and we all come together for the love of the horses and racing.  Fergus Wilson has been a long serving owner at Pond House and he is unfortunately quite poorly at the moment and my thoughts and best wishes are with him at this time.  He may not be everyone’s cup of tea and may have different ideas to a lot of people about things but he has been very successful in life and with his horses.  We have had some very interesting telephone conversations over the years I can tell you!  He has been extremely kind to me and the staff over the years and we are very grateful for his support. The majority of his horses in recent times came from France and he picked them out himself from French claiming races.  The horses ran in his wife, Judith’s colours and we had a lot of winners and success.  Judith, kindly sent this through the other day, I thought it was a very interesting read and they were both very happy for me to share:

28 Firsts in Two Seasons.

Memoire of Judith Wilson

Claiming French Steeplechase Winners

My husband saw an advertisement in the Racing Post in 1998 for a horse to run in the Grand National. He contacted Martin Pipe and who was to guess that 25 years later I would win 20 firsts in my final season. It was quite remarkable really.

My husband is totally bed ridden 24 hours a day but his mind is still very active.

I will revert to him to tell the background!

My name is Fergus Wilson and I have always had an interest in livestock and in particular steeplechasers. I had horses with Martin for years and when he handed the reins to David, I had a number of horses winning by over 20 lengths.

I decided to target French Steeplechasers in France with a minimum of three firsts! I was not concerned with colour, pedigree or age. I could not speak French which turned into an asset. I did not purchase any industry newspapers in England or France. I did not subscribe to any television channels. I decided to do it totally my way!

I did not gamble on horses for if the horse was successfully claimed that was sufficient for me and I would recoup my money very quickly when the horses came to David Pipe to be trained.

Was I successful in obtaining the horse every time? Well no! One owner was a bit too good for me and bought the horse in using the well known trick of “defended by the son of the proprietor’. I kept my powder dry and awaited a rematch.

You have 30 minutes to make a claim so my agent was instructed to wait until 29th minute, having ensured the son of the proprietor had defended the claim, and ambush with a claim for 1,000 euros more! You may say why waste 1,000 euros unnecessarily but it was the best investment I ever made!

So, I had successfully acquired 13 horses but I would have liked 20 as a convenient figure to have in the string. At the end of the day, you can only buy what is available!

I now turn to the pedigree of the horses. I did not recognise any of the stallions used! It was clear that many of the mares were part bred and had some foreign blood!

I will explain for the benefit of readers that such a horse could not run on the flat as it is not purebred. Hence, I had horses I had claimed credited with ancestry of Selle Francaise, (SF), and various degrees of Arab ranging from 87% to 94% Arab!

All the more important I felt to ignore and go by wins of three or more! One horse was a 17.1 hands horse described as an “Arab”. Well, what absolute nonsense! The horse came to England and David Pipe ran it in a long distance chase and it won by a remarkable 41 lengths!

Now you do not get Arab horses winning steeplechases by 41 lengths in England. The horse was misdescribed on the France-Galop site. No doubt many generations back someone in the South West of France had used an Arab, but clearly over many generations it had been greatly reduced to almost nil.

My purchase strategy was to ignore all extraneous information and if it wins, three or more races purchase it! Just as well I did!

I took the decision to be a total “armchair” owner and let everyone else do the work! Let me be clear, I never set eyes on any of the 13 horses mentioned during all the time my wife owned them!!

My wife put up the initial outlay and they were indeed her horses. We both kept a very low profile and whilst people commented in the British media the number, making contact was absolutely nil!

It became very clear at the beginning of the last season (2022-23) that my health was rapidly declining and I am now totally bed ridden and it would have to be my final season.

If you are a member of the David Pipe Racing Club and come across any of the horses on your travels you are always welcome to have your photograph taken with the horse!

I hope you have found this explanation of interest!

I had the easy part! David Pipe had to train the horses!