Monday 7th March – weekend review

Colder today, busy weekend made busier by late Friday night transfer of Buffalo Ballet from Loch Leven Equine to Royal Dick Veterinary Hospital, luckily he has made good progess there under the excellent care of John Mark O’Leary and should be home tomorrow.  Some of the runners ran above expectations and some below, details on http://www.kinneston.com/Kinneston/news-and-events.aspx (shortly), suffice it to say we came away with two seconds; most pleasing was the return to form of Commercial Express, narrowly defeated by Lucinda’s Badger Foot with the pair well clear of a competitive looking field.  Interestingly she had held Buffalo for the vet at Loch Leven whilst he was being examined late on Friday night, although she didn’t know it was my horse until I arrived to transfer it; a good example of the cooperative spirit between the local trainers, I was delighted for her when Bold Sir Brian won the big race at Kelso, this was an exceptional performance by such an inexperienced horse and it would be good for the area to have a really top class horse, just reward for Lucinda, Scu and their team who all work so hard.  Great reward also for Peter Buchanan who has now won the big race on three consecutive Saturdays, no rest for him as he was at the P2P on Sunday in trainer role and will be in here this afternoon to school having no doubt ridden 4 lots for his boss in the morning.  The worst thing about the weekend was the injury to Brian Harding at Kelso on Saturday; earlier in the afternoon he was on a high having ridden Skippers Brig to narrowly defeat National fancy Ballabrigs but then in the last he fell and was taken off by ambulance badly concussed and with a nasty break to his arm, he will struggle to be back in time to ride this horse in the National, let’s hope he makes a speedy recovery.
Horses worked on the all-weather this morning, Forcefield and Four Fiddlers schooled over hurdles, more schooling this afternoon over fences and some doing flatwork.  We have entries this week at Catterick on Wednesday, Carlisle on Thursday, Ayr on Friday & Saturday & Cumberland P2P on Saturday – will need to sit down and work out what’s going where!
Delighted to report that I have two more guest bloggers lined up this week – watch this space…

Commercial Express