THE VIEW by Gina Rarick, vol 2

A Look Back

BAYLAGAN taking second place in Clairefontaine.

Baylagan (above) ran a solid race to finish 2nd in Clairefontaine. He’s turned a page physically and is turning into a nice horse. Pantomime ran her comeback race and finished only 9th, and then got unlucky with her entry in Deauville falling into the first division rather than the second, so she had to settle for 6 h place. She is a very big mare, and it’s taking a little racing to get her going, but she’ll be back in the money soon.

Poor Aborigene had a horrible time in Le Lion d’Angers. It poured rain the entire day and by post time the track was knee-deep in mud. He didn’t care for it at all and came home without any money and desperately needing a shower.

New claim Radja has joined the team. He’s a four-year-old colt with a solid record behind him who should be effective on the soft ground going into fall. He had a few niggles physically, but hopefully, we’re on the right track with him.

Overall, August has been a slow rebuilding month for us, so we plan to start September with a bang!

The Look Ahead

Lots of action coming up in the next week. Baylagan will start us off in Chantilly on Saturday, Aug. 31, in a 1600-meter (one-mile) claimer. He’s been falling nicely in the handicap ratings, so this race should accomplish two purposes: Bring him down to a rating of 30, which opens doors to some favorable handicap entries, and see how he handles the longer distance. If he can stay a mile, we have lots of options.

Dubai Empire is likely to have his comeback race at Longchamp on Sunday, Sept. 1. He’s not quite ready, but we don’t have good entries behind this one so we’ll have to take it and look at it as a race to advance his fitness. We won’t push him but rather see what he will do of his own accord.

The Racetrack at Craon.

On Monday, Sept. 2, we’ll hit the road for Croan, one of our favorite country tracks, with Starstruck and Glorious Emaraty, who will be having his debut for us. Starstruck will hopefully fall into the second division of the Quinte, but that’s not sure yet. We’ll have to take a crack at it even if she’s in the first division because once again, she is in form. If she’s in the second division, she should have a good chance to win. If she’s unlucky to find herself at the bottom of the first division, either she’ll place, or her handicap mark will come down. But she needs to run. Glorious will run a Class 2 conditions race over a distance of 1,350 meters. The objective here is to see how he races; he needs two more races in France to get a handicap mark, and we’d rather not have him too highly rated to start.

Simon’s Smile, our other English acquisition, will debut for us on Thursday, Sept. 4, just up the road at our home track in Maisons-Laffitte. He’ll try a one-mile claimer for jockeys who haven’t won 12 races this year. Aude Duporte will take the ride. We’re looking forward to seeing both of these English horses run.

And Aborigene will be back in action on Thursday, Sept. 5, at Longchamp, where the ground should suit him quite a lot better than the bog at Le Lion d’Angers!

Contact Me For Details

We are going to Tattersalls sale at Newmarket in late October.  There we look for horses with French premiums and opportunities to improve.  If you or a friend are interested in ownership, please contact me.  We offer you the opportunity to buy your own horse or as we say in the yard “take a leg of a horse” which means anywhere from 5% to 50% of the horse.  We have owners who like to spread the costs, and new owners are always welcome.

Cagnes-sur-Mer is not that far off.  Join us for a day, a week, a fortnight, or the entire six weeks from mid-January to late February on the French Riviera.  Many owners and friends are around, and we enjoy days at the races and sightseeing on off days.  Cagnes is an American-style racetrack where the horses live at the track so you can hang out in the barn area, meet many owners and other racetrack characters and they have a great restaurant there.

Let’s Cook!

The day I wheeled the hay steamer off the truck, you’d think I’d just brought in the first motorcar of the industrial era. A small group of curious onlookers crowded around the new, mysterious machine with a mix of skepticism and apprehension. Chantal, the landlady of our stable, immediately started pacing the yard. The machine would consume two things she holds most dear: Electricity and water.

“You’ll need a special outlet for that. It’s going to take a huge amount of power,” she said, pacing around the steamer unit at a safe distance. I left her alone to digest the new contraption to go and watch the lot of horses I had just sent out to work. When I returned, she was measuring the length of the steamer box itself, an imposing, black casket-like box that could hold a bale and a half of hay or two bodies, if you were so inclined. “Where will this go? How much steam will come out when you open it? Where is the instruction manual?”

I continued to go about my work, and after the next lot, she had brought down her husband, Alan, to survey the situation and had read most of the instructions. “You’ll need a longer hose, too,” she decided. She spent most of the day fretting about how it would all work, and the next day our electrician friend came to install an outlet – and a meter so we could pay our share of the cost. “It’s not that big of a deal,” he said. “You mean I don’t need to build that nuclear power plant in the back yard?” I asked. Chantal, overhearing, stormed away. It was time to get started. We filled up the reservoir, put the first bale in the coffin, snapped it close and hit the button. An hour later, we popped it open to see the results, and they were impressive: The hay smelled wonderful and it was dust-free.

Mark, an owner who also doubles as our yard man, took to the new machine with the fervor of Heisenberg. He set his cell-phone alarm for every cycle, calculated how many bales we’d need for the day, came up with a system of rotating them through and – most importantly – kept water in the thing so it wouldn’t burn dry. We were cooking. And I’m sure it’s a coincidence, but the day we started feeding steamed hay, the horses started running better. We sent out six runners in the week after we started using the machine, and every one of them made money. Now this is what we’re more used to around here, and we desperately needed it after a dismal run of luck.

Fanoos started us off by hanging on to 5th place in a very hot condition race in Fontainebleau. She was only beaten a length and would have been closer if she hadn’t slowed down to watch the horses walking in the stabling area just next to the course about 200 meters from the finish. Gut Instinct followed up with fourth a couple of days later in Nancy, and then Hard Way won in Chantilly. It was the old man’s fourth career win and put him over the 100,000 euro mark in earnings. It also broke our losing streak. Just 20 minutes earlier in Craon, Alice’s Dancer finished 3rd in a Listed race, surprising us all. It was a fantastic run and fulfills our objective of getting some black type for her breeding career. Barbe a Box and Impulsive American rounded out the results, with both of them finishing fourth – Bbox in Lyon and the Imp in Maisons-Laffitte.

So it seems that we’ve turned a page, at least for now. We still have some problems to solve, as usual, but the recent run has made everyone breathe a little easier. Even Chantal, who has been convinced that maybe the new machine is harmless. And apparently quite helpful.