Author: grarick

France Galop backed down in the face of a very strong labor movement and for now, they have taken closing Maisons-Laffitte off the table. They sure haven’t backed down on Longchamp, though, and briefly posted a very high-end (read expensive) video previewing the “New Longchamp” on their web site. The film was hastily taken down, probably in the realization that now was not the time for such propaganda.

But meanwhile, we have work to do, and it’s been a long time since I wrote about what, exactly, my horses have been up to. King Driver has been the star of the show, finally winning his race at Compiegne a few weeks ago and making him perfect for the season so far, with a check on every outing. He’s doing great, and will probably run again on Nov. 26 in Chantilly.

Gorki Park has had two off races, mostly because of the very heavy ground, I think. He also may have just lost his way a bit, so we’ll see if he finds it with a try on the fibersand in Chantilly on Tuesday. He seems to be fine, but he’s a small horse who always gives his all, so maybe he’ll just need a seasonal break. Tuesday will tell us more, although I’d rather stretch him out to 1,900 meters on the fiber and Tuesday’s race is just 1,600, which might be a bit quick for him.

Hard Way and new recruit Babaway will also run on Tuesday. Hard Way goes back on the fibersand, and as usual we really don’t know what he will do. Babaway is running the 1,300-meter handicap in his first race since getting gelded and changing trainers, so it will be a discovery mission. He’s a big bruit of a horse who prefers to pull first and breath later, so the prime objective will be not to fight with him and just see how he wants to run.

Gold Knight finally pulled in another check last night at Lyon, which falls well because he’s going to the sales on Monday. I hope he finds a trainer who will get him back into form, because I haven’t been able to find the buttons. He’s clearly got some ability, but I’ve had a hard time bringing it out. I have no problem admitting that perhaps someone could do better.

Hera Eria so far hasn’t been able to repeat her good run at Compiegne earlier this year, but she’s also been stuck on very heavy ground twice now, and clearly it doesn’t suit her. I really would like to see her get a try on the fiber before passing judgement, and she may get that on Nov. 26. Greatest, too, is finally improving, and he’s not really a fibersand horse although he ran decently at Lyon last night, finishing 7th after being forced to set the pace. He’s now qualified for handicaps and should be fine if I can find the right race for him, which so far I haven’t been able to do.

We’ve got a couple of new faces in the barn, with our unraced two-year-old filly La Mer making steady progress. She will hopefully be ready for a debut in Deauville, but if not will head directly to Cagnes sur Mer. New acquisitions Ray of Hope and Charitable Act are doing very well and both will be racing soon. We have some new owners for these horses, so we’re waiting for France Galop to finish the paperwork before we can start to get them entered. One leg of Charitable Act is still available, so contact me if you’re interested. He’s a nice solid horse and is nearly ready to race.

We’ve also turned a page at the yard with the retirement of Deep Ocean, which has been on the cards for awhile but now has finally happened. It was a tough decision, because while he was full of arthritis, he really loved to race and his heart overcame his infirmities most of the time. But we finally had to call it a day, and he has found a wonderful home in the Mayenne region, where he will even get the chance to do a bit of breeding.

I think that’s just about everybody. November is a very tough month because we’ve come to the end of the classic flat season and the winter racing hasn’t really geared up yet on the all-weather tracks, so we’re a bit stuck with entries. It seems we really have no horses that love the horribly heavy ground, so we’ll take the entries we can get for now and count on being ready for Deauville and then Cagnes later on.

Back when the Internet was very young and I was still working at the International Herald Tribune (which no longer exists, sadly), we only had one computer in the newsroom that was connected to this new marvelous invention. The concept of interactivity was new and fun, and we were all agog at even the most basic web sites (which was pretty much all there was back then). One offered a quick 10-question quiz and would then spit back the career to which the responder was most suited, in large block letters filling the screen. We all gathered around and took turns – “teacher”, “librarian”, “doctor”, the machine spit back, offering the same mundane responses to enough different people that we were pretty sure they were just on a loop somewhere. Then it was my turn. I answered the questions, the computer went searching for a few minutes, a small crowd of us waited, and then practically fell over laughing when the words “field marshal” filled the screen. Various other coworkers tried the quiz after that, but none came up with a similar career suggestion.

My colleagues at various places over the years have seen me as a leader, someone who speaks her mind, someone who probably complains too much but someone who, at the end of the day, is pretty competent and will get the job done. Some of them liked me, some of them despised me, but no one was without an opinion on the subject. My bosses have seen me as a complainer, a fomenter of revolution, and yes, someone who is pretty competent and will get the job done. Most of them were relieved when I moved on to another job and left them in peace. Most of them would probably liked to have fired me but very few were courageous enough to actually do it.

Which brings me to my current situation, which is a strange middle ground of being the boss of a few, the employee of many (my owners) and serving at the pleasure of an entity called France Galop, which is the governing body of horse racing. As a licensed public trainer, I am the master of my ship, the owner of my own business. Sort of. But France Galop sets the rules, and they give out the licenses. Which they can also take away if they so choose. And this is why most trainers walk softly and skip the big stick. One has to be careful of what one says, not to run afoul of the Powers that Be. The Powers that Be also fund most of the racing media – Paris Turf, the daily racing newspaper, and Equidia, the racing television channel, depend on France Galop for funding. Consequently, they are usually not the bearer of bad news – or certainly not anything bad when it comes to France Galop.

I’ve had no problem with France Galop, per se, since I started training. I got very good scores on the exams to pass the license, I’ve never broken the rules, my horses never fail a drug test and I pretty much keep my head down. But as anyone who knows me knows, I just can’t keep quiet if there is something that is bothering me that I think can be fixed. And right now at France Galop, there is quite a lot that needs to be fixed. As I write this, racing at my home track in Maisons-Laffitte has been canceled for the day because of a strike by track workers. This followed news last night that France Galop plans to close our track for good as part of budget cuts. The problem is, at the same time France Galop wants to spend 160 million euros to renovate Longchamp, in the guise of buffing up France’s international image.

Longchamp is filled to capacity for only one day a year: The day of the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe. The rest of the time, the place is practically empty – like most racecourses in France, which is another problem. The nationwide betting handle has gone up for years and now has stabilized, but on-track attendance has plummeted. There are plenty of reasons for this – it’s easier to bet at home online, for one, and Equidia does such a good job with covering the racing that you can see more at home than you can at the track, too. Going racing isn’t very attractive when you can’t see what’s going on, there aren’t enough windows open to get a bet on if you wanted to and – most importantly, if you ask me – there’s nothing decent to eat. Despite all this, though, betting is still very strong in this country. It did edge down just slightly in the past year, which is causing the wholesale panic at the PMU national betting monopoly and at France Galop, which is funded by the PMU.

The situation reminds me very much of the plight of newspapers when the Internet was born. Owning a newspaper used to be a license to print money along with the latest gossip. But then the Internet came, and all of a sudden profits stabilized, and then they started to drop. And then the panic began. Newspaper dynasties thrashed about looking for the next profit stream. They sponsored conferences, they developed web sites, then tried to make people pay for the web sites, all the while cutting the budget nonstop – from the bottom, where the core of their product was produced.

France Galop seems to be doing the same thing. In closing Maisons-Laffitte to help pay for Longchamp, they’re robbing Peter to pay Paul. At the same time, they’re spending money on absolutely ridiculous ventures like sponsoring a race meeting in China that turned out to be nothing more than a hastily put-together party in some Mongolian corn field with horses that Coolmore considered castoffs and so could be sacrificed for the one-way trip to Neverland. There has been no disclosure on just how much this little venture cost.

France Galop also has decided that recruiting new owners is a priority. The ethics of this decision astound me. If the governing body of French racing is recruiting owners, to which trainers will they send them? Since they have decided to close the track at Maisons-Laffitte and seem to have a similar disregard for the training center here, I can’t imagine I’ll need to sit by the phone and wait for owners sent by France Galop to ring up.

There are two departments within France Galop that are, ostensibly, there to help new owners and take care of existing ones. I don’t know what the budget of either of these departments is, but I DO know that I’ve tried to solicit their help on various occasions with getting new owners approved and through the dreaded “dossier” process, and not once have I had any luck. I called the famous “departement des proprietaires” three weeks ago with a question on the owner application process. No one could answer the question, but they took my name and number and promised to call back. Still waiting.

And let’s not even get started on the famous FRBC, or French Racing and Breeding Commission, which, according to its mission statement, “is to provide you with information on racing and breeding in France.” I don’t know what their budget is, either, but I do know that their primary role seems to be to send attractive young ladies in very short skirts to man a table at French sales and hand out hats. At one such sale, I had a prospective owner with me who was very keen to get started. I went to the FRBC table. “This man would like to be an owner. Could you please sign him up?” “Ah, mais non,” came the reply. “That’s France Galop. It has nothing to do with us.” Ah. I see. Nice hat, though.

While France Galop ponders its role in looking for new owners, I’ve personally deposited the “dossiers” of more than a dozen new owners in the past five years. They have all been for non-French owners, and each one has been an ordeal of paperwork that I have had to fill out and explain to new owners, trying all the time not to discourage them with all the ridiculous formality. Instead, I should be able to pick up the phone to the famous “owners’ department,” tell them that Mr. X wants to own a horse with me and THEY should take care of the rest. As it is, you can’t even get them to answer the phone.

It seems, rather, that France Galop is living in a fantasy world, where a fairy godmother is going to wave a magic wand and Longchamp will be filled to capacity every day it has race meetings. Rich owners trailing money will send top-class horses to fill the stables of the big trainers in Chantilly. Syndicates, English-style, will take up the rest, sending second-tier horses to only slightly smaller trainers. In this fantasy world, there are no bad horses, small trainers or small owners. Only the biggest and best will do. The only trouble is, the inhabitants of the Ivory Tower in Boulogne have forgotten that horse racing is actually a pyramid, and without the base, the pyramid collapses. There are very few Group 1 horses in the world, and very few owners who can afford them. There are, though, plenty of less-talented animals, and those are the ones who fill the cards and keep the PMU money coming, because bettors love big fields. A four-runner Group 1 race at Longchamp doesn’t bring in a fraction of what a 20-runner handicap at St. Cloud will provide.

I’m not sure where the action in Maisons-Laffitte today will lead, but it does seem to be the opening salvo in a much-needed revolution. Being a foreigner and serving at the pleasure of the King, I’m not sure what role I might get to play in this conflict. But if the chance arises, perhaps I can once again try to live up to my job description.

We’re still recovering from another Arc weekend, but it was a great party and what an amazing race. Our paddock-side group grew to 28 people this year, as we gathered owners, potential owners and breeders from far and wide – a few Americans, plenty from England, a dash of Luxembourg, some Canadians (!) and even a couple of French people for good measure. We had a great corner table overlooking the parade ring, giving everyone a pretty close view of Treve, Orfevre, Intello and the rest.

We had a bit of racing of our own around the big day. Eternal Gift ran very well in the mile handicap on Saturday, settling for 5th (and another check) but giving us a good yell in any case when he hit the front just a little too far from the winning post. Hera Eria ran 2nd at Compiegne last week, rewarding a somewhat audacious try at a mile after usually running nearly double that. And King Driver had to settle for fourth at Chantilly on Monday, again a race he could have won easily with a better trip. This time we had the other extreme – rather than running too fast out front, he got stuck in traffic and couldn’t get out in time. With a decent trip, he will win, but it’s frustrating to not quite get there.

Hard Way goes to St. Cloud tomorrow for a 3,100-meter handicap. The competition is tough, but it is raining, and every drop helps his chances. He seems well, but Hard Way never really lets us know what he’s going to do until he does it, so we shall see. Gorki Park goes to Chantilly on Friday, and Gold Knight will race in Maisons-Laffitte on Saturday. We would very much like at least one of these guys to bump up the win column. Meanwhile, we’ve got Grey Falcon in the wings for next week.

This blog has become like the letter to an old friend that you really want to write, but there’s so much to say you keep putting it off. Tonight, I’ve conquered my procrastination so here we go, starting back to front.

This has been a tremendously tough week, because we had a lot of runners and not many real chances. Unfortunately, you can’t always run to win. Sometimes, you’re on an exploratory mission instead, bringing a horse back from a long layoff or trying one out for the first time. Santarini, Hera Eria and Greatest all fell into that category.

Santarini, if you’ve been following along, is a huge four-year-old filly who had knee chips removed in February down in Cagnes sur Mer. Knee chips, plural, because the vet clinic operated on the wrong leg first, then had to do the right one. No matter, both knees were bad, so while it was technically malpractice, in reality we got a two-for-one knee deal. She’s been on the rehab trail since, and finally ran her comeback race last week at St. Cloud. The race was 2,100 meters long, but it turns out Santarini really can only stay about 1,600. Her pedigree says that, and her past performance says that, but she is the size of an oil tanker and looks for all the world like she’s built to run a mile and a half – or maybe even two or three. But no, it seems she only wants to run a mile after all, so that’s what she’ll do next time out.

Greatest debuted for us last week in Fontainebleau. He was bought at the July sale, and seems to be a very nice horse that needs soft ground, and probably a shorter trip than what he’d been getting in Ireland. Because he is an import, we don’t have many choices for entries for the first few races here, so he ran a 2,600-meter claimer. And while I was looking for soft ground, what we got was a bog, with several days of rain before the race and plenty of rain on race-night, too, just to add to our pleasure. He came back with a good knock to his hock, but otherwise relatively unscathed and will run slightly shorter next time out, when he’ll be entered in a 2,300-meter race in Le Mans. It’s still a bit too long, I think, but we have to take what we can get.

Hera Eria is a tougher kettle of fish. She’s a big, four-year-old filly who came to us over the summer desperately needing to build up some back muscle. She did, and now looks fantastic, but it turns out she also has some serious issues, chief among them being she’d rather not gallop next to other horses, thank you very much. She ran a debut race for us like a filly that had never seen a racecourse before. That embarrassment earned her a set of full blinkers, which seemed to help a bit and she ran much better at St. Cloud. We’re still figuring her out, and I think ear plugs might come next, but I really hope we can get to the bottom of her because she is a lovely horse with a bit of ability, and it would be a shame to waste it.

We’re also still trying to figure out Gold Knight, but he seems to be coming around a bit, running two places down in the country. He’s looking pretty well and still may have some back issues, but hopefully will be ready to tackle a race in Maisons-Laffitte in early October.

Most of the other horses are doing pretty well, but we’re just waiting for the right races. Eternal Gift had two off runs, but both were over courses I wasn’t sure would suit him but wanted to try – the famous 1,400-meter “tobaggan” at Longchamp (just a bit too slow for that) and the 1,600-meter straight at Maisons-Laffitte (the lack of a turn does not favor a front-runner, unless you’re super-horse, and sadly, he is not). He’ll go back to Longchamp on Arc weekend to run a mile handicap WITH a turn, the same course he won on in July, and he should appreciate that better.

King Driver is doing great, taking home money in all four of his starts this year. Only problem is he should have won last week at St. Cloud and finished only 5th, partially because Olivier Peslier forgot he was sitting on a nice handicapper and not the next Sea the Stars. He set too strong a pace out front, and couldn’t quite hang on. He wasn’t beaten far, though, and he’s knocking on the door for a win, which should come soon.

Gorki Park came back from his summer vacation ready to work, which he showed us by finishing a nice 2nd in his comeback race at Longchamp. He now has two nice entries in October, and all indications are that he’ll be a very fun horse this fall.

Hard Way and Grey Falcon are waiting for the right races to come along, and both of them have good chances coming up in October. Deep Ocean is more of a puzzle, because I’m not sure where we are with him. We were going to retire him because his arthritis is starting to take a toll, but now he seems to have regained some form and will stay around for a bit longer. He is a tough horse, but also tough to place because there aren’t any great entries for him at the moment. The best chance will be back at his favorite track in Lyon, but that race isn’t until November, and he’ll need to do something in between. Not sure what yet, though.

And there have been some comings and goings: Not Bad for a Boy convinced us he really didn’t want to be a racehorse when he finished only 6th in a very easy country race. He was promoted to 5th after a jockey in the money forgot to weigh in, which gave him an oh-so-tiny check, but there was really no point in insisting. He has found a very happy home doing trail riding and some show jumping, and his new owners love him, so that’s a story that ended well. Meanwhile, we’ve added Babaway, a three-year-old who is coming back from a late gelding this summer and a change in trainer, and La Mer, a very promising two-year-old filly who will be prepped for the Cagnes sur Mer meeting.

That sort of catches things up in a nutshell. There’s a lot more that could be said, but then I’d just be putting it off again!

 

Our movable racing feast will move South on Saturday when Eternal Gift and King Driver race in Moulins. Everybody else seems to be in Deauville, which seems an ideal time to go elsewhere looking for winners. Eternal will run a mile handicap and try to confirm his victory at Longchamp. He should race well, because he has come on from his last race. There are two or three horses in his 12-horse field that might give him a bit of a run, but if he handles the four-hour trip down, he should run in the money.

The same goes for King Driver, who has even easier competition in his 2,200-meter handicap. He seems in great form, and if he runs anything like he did in Vichy, which he should, he could finally find the winner’s circle. The variables, of course, are the transport and the state of the track. Neither horse is a fantastic traveller, but at least the heat has broken so we won’t have that to contend with. We should get decent ground, too, barring a downpour like the one we had this week in Maisons-Laffitte, when nature chose to give us an entire two-month allotment of rain in one go.

I think King will go on any ground (not sure on that, just a feeling), but Eternal doesn’t do his best work if it’s too soft.

The rest of the yard is pretty much concentrating on getting ready for autumn, with the exception of Gold Knight and Not Bad for a Boy, who both will have races in Deauville this month if they don’t get eliminated. Hard Way and Grey Falcon did run in Chantilly at the end of July, and neither finished in the money, which was disappointing. It seems 2,400 meters over good ground is just too short for Hard Way, who can win at that distance but only if the ground is heavy. Over good ground, he needs more runway. Grey Falcon ran decently and finished 6th, just out of the frame, but he was probably done in by the heat and the fact that he’s had a good amount of racing this year. He’s now building himself back up and he’ll do some jumping before he races again in September.

Gorki Park is back from his vacation with a suntan and about 50 kilos of added weight, which is a good thing. He’s picked up training right where he left off and he should be ready by mid-September. Santarini is back and working well, and new additions Hera Eria and Greatest are coming along, too, and hopefully will run in September.

Deep Ocean, our banker, was due to retire after his race on Aug. 1, but now we’re all having second thoughts about that – especially Himself, who seems not to want to leave. So he’ll stay around in light training to see if he is up for the Quinte at Longchamp on Sept. 15. Retirement beckons soon, though, because his arthritic legs won’t last forever. He has been an absolutely fabulous horse, and loves his job, which is why he thinks he doesn’t want to give it up yet.

Meanwhile, on to Moulins!

We’ve passed into July, and the weather has finally caught up with us. Summer, finally, is here. I’m actually wearing shorts and a t-shirt at 8:30 at night and not freezing. We’ve been able to leave the horses naked overnight, and they’re happy. While the weather up until now has been dismal, our results haven’t: For the first half of the year, 45 percent of our runners have been in the money. Out of 42 starts, we have four wins and 14 places and just under 120,000 euros in earnings. And yes, I’ve been bragging a bit about this, because those numbers are great for a small yard like ours. (A big disclaimer for my American readers: These percentages will seem average to poor in a country where “super-trainers” posting double-digit win percentages is the norm. I will point out that we have accomplished our numbers with eight horses in training. Unless the “super-trainers” want to declare their percentage of broken horses and their vet records, I will take the high ground here.)

We are working hard to keep the good form going, and we have some strong chances ahead. Hard Way, who ran a very good comeback race in Durtal, will go to Longchamp on Saturday to run a 3,100-meter handicap with his old friend Christophe Lemaire in the saddle. He should have every chance to win. Grey Falcon, who has been improving steadily, runs the second half of the Tierce handicap in Maisons-Laffitte on Sunday. After that, it’s on to Vichy, where Deep Ocean will try his best again as he always does in a Tierce on Bastille Day. That race marks the start of the week-long festival there, and we should have four other runners to keep us busy: Not Bad for a Boy will make his French debut, King Driver will run his comeback race, Eternal Gift will try to show us some better form, as will Gold Knight, who has been disappointing so far but seems to be on the upswing in his work.

Meanwhile, the sales season is also getting going, with Deauville this week and Newmarket next week. The Newmarket catalog is not particularly strong this time around, but it is one of my favorite sales and it gives me a chance to go to the July Meeting as well, so I won’t miss it. There are a few French-bred horses to look at, and there is usual a decent deal or two to be had. So it looks like a busy next couple of weeks, which is just what we need to kick off our summer and keep the results rolling along.

The white pigeon showed up about four weeks ago. The yard lab Vladamir the Impaler was the first to notice him, of course, and sat fixated on the roof where the pigeon perched, looking out of his element trying to grip the clay tiles that the ordinary pigeons navigated with ease. I pointed him out to Agata, who glanced up and said “It’s God. He’s here to check on us.” It was, after all, just after Pentecost, if you believe in that sort of thing, so the timing would be about right.

I don’t know if God had anything to do with it, but our first two runners after he showed up were both in the money: Grey Falcon was second in Angers and Gorki Park was third at Longchamp. God then disappeared for a few days, and it was probably a coincidence, but Eternal Gift’s comeback race at Le Lion d’Angers couldn’t have gone worse. God must have decided that the food wherever he went wasn’t as good as the stuff he was getting in our yard, so he came back. No one told Gold Knight, though, and he ran a dismal race in Chantilly.

Just after that, God got brave enough to start eating out of our hands. As a matter of fact, he preferred it that way, because the other, ordinary pigeons kept their distance, so God got all the food. God had pretty much settled in by the time Grey Falcon and Hard Way headed down to Durtal, where Grey Falcon ran a good fourth and confirmed he was starting to understand the game and Hard Way ran 6th, a good effort after six months off in a race that was too short for him.

God is getting quite fat now, and I’ve said that if he attains the size of the neighboring trainer’s chickens, we’ll have to eat him. This suggestion didn’t go down well with some in the yard, who argued that he was clearly bringing good luck. We’ll get a chance to see whether or not that is the case on Sunday, when Deep Ocean runs the nightcap on the French Oaks card. It is a pretty good entry for him, and I’ve given him plenty of time to prepare. Deep will the third runner I’ve had on Oaks Day, and I haven’t had much luck so far. Something always seems to go wrong, and I’ve decided that next year, unless we have a horse in the big race itself, I will be watching the Oaks from the comfort of my couch.

But who knows? Maybe God can turn things around. He’s been eating a handful of Red Mills High-Oil Racehorse mix morning and night, and he certainly seems to be doing well on it. He prefers that to the other blends, like Cool Mix for horses not in work or Endurance Mix, which is meant to put on weight. He is now twice the size of the normal, grey-and-speckled pigeons, and he cuts quite an imposing figure, snow-white with red feet and a pink beak. We have no idea where he came from or how long he’ll stay, but as long as the horses are running well, God can keep eating out of the palm of my hand morning and night.

 

It’s hard to believe it’s almost June, when the weather says November. But the yard is rolling along, and we are making big plans for the summer, in the hopes that it one day might come.

Grey Falcon has finally turned the page, and while he is still galloping quite green, the jumping in training has helped his coordination and he ran a very good second in Angers last week, beaten just a short head. It’s doubly good news considering he still has quite a bit of improving to do. We’ll keep jumping in training, and he might eventually run over hurdles because he really seems to like it and is a nice big horse, so he’s built for it. Meanwhile, though, he’ll continue on the flat. His next target is June 9 at a country meeting in Durtal, a race that might well also see Hard Way make his long-awaited comeback. There is a new series of races at various country tracks and the prize money is nice, so we’ll probably try to run a few of these. The one on June 9 is a 2,200-meter handicap, which suits both horses. The other two options for Hard Way are closer to home, but not as attractive: a mile handicap at St. Cloud, a track he loves but a distance that is really far too short, and a 2,400-meter handicap in Maisons-Laffitte, which is the right distance but the wrong track. Hard Way hates Maisons-Laffitte, so there’s really no point in bothering with it.

Gorki Park will go back to Longchamp on Wednesday where he’ll have another crack at the second division of the Quinte handicap, the same sort of race he won in St. Cloud. He gave us a scare last week when he got loose and banged himself up a bit, but he’s a tough little horse and seems, thankfully, no worse for wear. A stirrup broke when his rider was pulling him up, the saddle turned and the rest, as they say, is history. Unfortunately these kind of things happen from time to time, and we were lucky things ended up OK. Despite his handicap penalty for the win, he still will have a chance on Wednesday with a decent draw. We’ll know post positions tomorrow.

Deep Ocean is preparing to run a nice handicap on June 16, the day of the Prix de Diane at Chantilly. He’s had a tough spring season, so we’ve taken the foot off the gas a bit to have him good and ready for Chantilly, which will be a very nice race for him. Our new recruit Gold Knight did not run a great race in Chantilly in his debut for us and his new owners, Foxtrot Racing, but he’s coming on and should do fine once we get him situated. He stumbled coming out of the gate and almost landed on his nose, so we’ll have to throw that race out and look ahead. He is likely to run a handicap on June 5 here in Maisons-Laffitte. He’s still too highly rated, so even if he doesn’t finish in the money, it will do to get his rating down for better races this summer.

Eternal Gift is just about ready for his comeback after his big equipment change. He’s doing very well and I’m looking forward to having him back as a gelding. He doesn’t seem to notice that anything is missing, except that he’s finding it easier to gallop without the burden of manhood. His comeback race is likely to be June 4 in Lion d’Angers.

Two more horses are rounding out the team for summer: King Driver is back and new recruit Not Bad for a Boy has joined him. They have been in pre-training with Xavier Richard and hopefully it won’t take too long to get them up and running. We had a lot of health problems with King last year after we discovered he had picked up a tapeworm, which led to all sorts of complications. He was put away for winter and has been in light work for a few months now, and he looks very well. I had forgotten what a wonderful long stride he has. If his health doesn’t fail him this year, he should be a very interesting horse to watch. Not Bad was a very promising two-year-old in England but then had a dismal three-year-old season after gelding. He’s starting over now in France and he looks promising, too.

Now all wee need is the weather to cooperate and we’ll be in for a good summer. We’ve already started off the year very well, and I’m looking forward to continuing the good form we’ve seen so far this spring.