Freezing Temps

 
         Saturday Morning at Pond House

Well I hope by the time everyone is reading this on Sunday that England are through to the semi-finals of the World Cup..... Unfortunately all the jumps cards in Britain and Ireland were lost to the elements yesterday and things do not look much better for today.  Carlisle has already been called off while Southwell are looking at 9.30am.  They do have the covers down and say they would have raced yesterday so fingers crossed they may today!  In Ireland there was due to be some Graded action at Punchestown and racing at Cork but both tracks were inspecting yesterday so I have a feeling they will have also been lost to the weather.

Yesterday morning we woke to a light dusting of snow at Pond House and then it did snow pretty hard for an hour or so but then eased off and then we had snow flurries thruoghout the morning.  It is great however with the all-weather facilities that the work continued as normal here with the horses and everyone was kept warm with breakfasts baps mid-way through the morning - happy staff!  The weather looks set to disrupt the racing programme for a lot of next week but we have to go through the daily process of declaring, planning and seeing what happens.  It does not look like the temperatures are set to remain cold until next weekend so we all may only have the all-weather action to keep us going.

Hopefully however, I am racing at Wadebridge in Cornwall today.  I am planning to go to the point to point down there and being near Newquay, near the sea the temperatures are a bit warmer.  I am a keen point to point goer, supporting my brother Darren who rides and jockeys like Jo Supple and Martin McIntyre who are all in action today.  It is brilliant that they have great entries today and so fingers crossed they will get plenty of runners and some competitive races which is not always the case down there.  If you were attending the track for the first time today, you might wonder how an earth there can be a course on the land it is on but lots of people run on it and even our former Hennessy and Paddy Power chase winner, Celestial Gold has won a point to point at Wadebridge.  When David was training point to pointers he had plenty of runners and winners down there.  People are travelling from all over the country to run their horses today and I have no doubt the winner of the maiden race will probably be for sale afterwards!  

I hope you all have a good Sunday.  The only thing my friends like doing with me is eating.  I call them my taste buds!