We have all wintered well up on the hill here at Woodway and we are dusting off the horses ready to go into battle with a busy few days ahead. Talking of battles, the horses haven't seen our All-Weather gallop for the past couple of weeks due to the filming of the latest Ridley Scott (I did have to Google him) blockbuster revolving around the Battle Of Waterloo - so we will look forward to watching 'Marengo' when it hits our screens and spotting the gallops and any dog walkers that sneaked into shot! In the interim the horses and staff have been spending their mornings over on our 'Pond Gallop' which features ancient peat moss turf and walks like the most luxurious of Shagpiles!
Back to the horses, we are unleashing our stable star Jumby at Newmarket tomorrow. William Buick who has a good record on him, takes the ride and fingers crossed Jumby can have another great year. We will also be having runners at Bath, Newbury and Musselburgh.....Yes I did say Musselburgh which is a bit of a rare one for us as I believe Eve has only had one previous runner there in the past - so fingers crossed the trek will be worthwhile!
The 2yos are coming to the boil nicely after simmering away under a low heat over the past couple of months as 'cantering away nicely' has been our go-to phrase with our owners as we gradually increased the 2yos workload. We are very lucky to have a cracking bunch of around 25 two year old this season and have ran one so far . We are looking forward to our next one hitting the track on Thursday - which will be Whistle And Flute carry the colours of last year's star turn Chipotle.
Eve has been a loyal supporter of the Ascot Colts and Fillies' Club by supplying them with a horse to run under their name for a good few years. The Club's ethos is to get kids interested in racing and has around 20,000 members. Thankfully they don't all visit our yard at once, but we did welcome a group of 30 or so for a yard visit on Monday. The Parents were thrilled as we certainly put the kids through their paces tiring them out for the drive home! We walked and trotted them a couple of furlongs back and forth to the gallops, put them on the horse walker and even jumped them out of the stalls. Safe to say we don't follow this routine with all our visitors and certainly not our owners, but the kids had a wonderful time and fingers crossed the Club horse 'Miss Matterhorn' - born and bred here at Woodway, can do them proud when she makes her debut in the coming weeks.
