Author: grarick

Turfani ran 4th in Deauville on Friday, finally getting to stretch her legs for the first time in three months. She was beaten three lengths and missed third by a head. She has come back well, and I’ll keep going with her through Cagnes before she retires to breeding.

On Tuesday, Blessing Belle makes her long-awaited return. She hasn’t run since May, because she turned over in her box and broke three vertebra in her withers. She has come back bigger and, it seems, stronger, if still a bit loopy in the head, so it will be interesting to see how she handles a return to racing. I’m just hoping she runs respectably and comes back ready for more, because she’ll go to Cagnes, too, along with George, who is in great form at the moment but can’t get into a race because he hasn’t earned enough. I’m hoping we’ll find something for him in Cagnes. Hi Shinko will go, too, and I’m spending the week trying to get organized for the trip, which seems to be quite an expedition. More on that soon.

Hi Shinko got caught up in a speed duel in Deauville yesterday, and both he and his rival ended up losers. The last time out, Shinko was able to take the lead and then slow the race down, keeping something in the tank to finish. This time, he went flat-out with another horse who tried to employ the same tactics. One of the jockeys should have been smart enough to pull back, but it didn’t work out that way and 100 meters from home, both leaders were spent. The time of the race was the fastest of the day at 1 minute, 28.1 seconds, and it was one of the fastest times on that course. Unfortunate, because I definitely expected to bring home money yesterday (which I do realize one should never expect in this game). A couple of other factors may have played into the race. I noticed when I was saddling Shinko that he was actually a bit fat. We have not been able to work properly since his last race because of the weather, and twice he was stuck in his box for a few days because it was too dangerous to go out. That also necessitated a feeding change, of course, so I think he was too fresh and fat for this race (hindsight is always 20/20). He’s come home fine, hardly blew after the race, ate up everything and is ready to go to Cagnes, where his next race should be on the turf – something I also think he will appreciate better than the fibersand, which maybe isn’t quite his cup of tea.

Next up: Turfani finally gets a run (I hope!) on Friday. She seems to have kept her form despite the weather – in any case, she is certainly not fat. Let’s see what happens.

Some of you may have already stumbled upon this, but we have updated the Gallop France web site over the New Year weekend. There were some glitches along the way, but most of it seems to work now. The site is basically the same, but the pictures are updated and so is the all-important “horses available” page. There is still some fine-tuning to be done and some additions to be made, but have a look around and tell us what you think.

We’re going to try to get off to a good start tomorrow with Hi Shinko in the second half of the Tierce. There is a saying in French racing: “Une chute appelle un gagnant,” or “A fall calls a winner,” meaning that if a rider comes off the horse, the horse has a win coming. Shinko already has a few notches carved into the door of his stall, the most recent being today, when he chucked off brave Florence. It’s time for him to start paying us back. He’s not tipped by the prognosticators, so maybe I’m overestimating his chances, but I think he should be in the first three. Watch this space…

Timelord was a very silly pony indeed yesterday when he backed away from another horse and managed to open a sewer drain cover and then fall right into it. He is very lucky to be alive today, if feeling quite sorry for himself. It all stated down on the all-weather track, where we have no choice but to go given the frozen ground everywhere else. Horses tend to get over-excited down there (see some earlier posts), and the fireworks started yesterday when everyone had to wait for the tractor to finish harrowing the track. There weren’t too many horses around when we arrived, but like badly managed airport security, no one was turning away horses at the main gate and the numbers started to pile up by the time the tractor was finished. Adding to that, we had a potentially explosive combination of horses – Hi Shinko, George and Timelord. When a horse decided to cross in front of Timelord to come into the holding area, he started to mess around and back up like a quarter horse, and none of us even knew that drain was there. It was tucked into the grass in the middle of the trotting ring, and in backing up Timelord slid the manhole cover off and then went in with his other back leg. In the next instant, he got himself back out; I called to Seb to jump off and to another trainer on the ground to call a vet because I was fearing the worst. For a horrible second or two, Timelord didn’t put the injured leg down, but then he did and walked a few steps, and we all let our breath out in a sigh of relief. There was plenty of blood, but it looked like there were no fractures. Our other horses, meanwhile, were putting on a rodeo; we had to get on with it or we would have more injuries. Seb hand-walked Timelord home and George and Shinko were able to do their work and let off a little steam.

Unfortunately, this means time off for Timelord. He’ll be in the box for 10 days or so – he has stitches in various places, sterile bandages that need changing and injections of antibiotics and anti-inflammatories. Then he’ll be going off to Normandy rather than going down to Cagnes-sur-Mer. France Galop has agreed to pay the vet fees and have put a mountain of sand over the sewer cap, so at least no other unfortunate horse will manage to do the same thing.

Timelord’s misfortune caps a year of freakish problems with my horses, and I’m very much looking forward to turning the page on 2010 and starting anew in 2011. New Year’s Day has always been one of my favorite holidays, and this year I think it has risen to the top of my list. The weather and the resulting disruption for the horses has been tough on all trainers, so I’m not alone, but I’m certainly ready for a change of luck. I end the year with 4 wins and 17 places from 71 starts, which is not as good as 2009 and not nearly as good as I had hoped. I will prefer to think of this one in percentages; 29.5 percent of starters in the money seems not quite so bad to me, even if it’s down from 34.4 percent in 2009.

So we’ll start again. Hi Shinko will be my first runner of 2011, running the second half of the Tierce in Deauville on Monday. Hope springs eternal.

Cot Campbell runs a group of racing partnerships in the United States called Dogwood Stables. I met him two years ago at the Breeders’ Cup in Santa Anita when Aikenite was running in the Juvenile. He is playing in a completely different league than me, and I’m sure he won’t remember we ever met. We didn’t have a long conversation, but if we did we wouldn’t have seen eye to eye on a number of racing issues. But there are some things in this sport that bind us all, and Cot summed it all up perfectly in his most recent commentary. I urge all of you to give it a quick read. It is quite a day brightener on the shortest day of the year.

Le Post gave up three days ago; the jockeys threw in the towel on Saturday. I, finally, gave in today. Mother Nature wins. Maisons-Laffitte has been buried under a good coating of snow since Saturday night. We were shoveling and salting the yard until midday Sunday, when it was clear the snow was falling faster than we could remove it. The mail hasn’t shown up since last Friday. Racing was canceled on Saturday, but not before Turfani spent more than four hours in a truck getting to Deauville. Then she spent another three and a half hours getting home, and has been stuck in her box since. George (Email Exit), Timelord and Shinko at least got to race on Friday. In Shinko’s case, the trip was worthwhile. He finished fourth, beaten just two lengths by a horse carrying two kilos less than he was. Without the weight, he would have won. He’ll now run the Tierce handicap on Jan. 3, where he will, for once, not be top weight and should have a good chance. That’s if we can get him out of his box. The snow is supposed to stop later today, and should be melted by tomorrow. That should mean we can finally get out. All the horses, after three days of confinement, will be very, very fresh. Shinko will be possibly lethal. We will do our best.

I’m not sure when we’re racing next. Turfani and Belle should have had entries next Monday, but in all the confusion about whether or not we would race this week, I’ve missed the entries. Belle was eliminated for this Wednesday and will hold a priority for her next entry, which is likely to be Dec. 31. I may end up supplementing Turfani for next Monday, but I have to see how the week works out first.

As it is, we were lucky to get home Saturday. The jockeys decided they weren’t interested in racing after cantering the horses down to the gate for the second race. After that, chaos ensued. Is it canceled or just delayed? Will they reschedule? When? And what’s the transport situation for getting out of here? It took an hour for stewards to figure out how racing would be rescheduled, with the meeting split between Monday and Tuesday. We were given the option of staying in Deauville, but that didn’t make much practical sense to most of us, since we didn’t come packed with provisions for three days. Then there was the question of whether the heavy transports could leave, because the autoroutes were being closed off to truck traffic. And on top of it, the woman who was in charge of dispatching the STH trucks was at lunch. Do remember, this is France. Mealtimes are to be respected no matter what the crisis. Meanwhile, though, the snow was falling faster. The dispatcher was finally convinced to skip dessert, and a list of those wanting to leave was compiled. But the French ability to snatch chaos from the jaws of organization prevailed again, and the loading of horses turned into a typical mess. First come, first served. I could see this coming, and had Turfani packed up and headed to the parking lot within five minutes. No time for two trips, I dragged our trunk full of equipment in one hand and let Turfani pull me along with the other. We were an hour out of Deauville when the gendarmes started waiving trucks off to the side. Luckily, they let us and another horse transport behind us through. We survived a second roadblock a half-hour later, and made it back to Maisons-Laffitte in decent time, considering the circumstances.

Shinko, Timelord and George didn’t have it much easier on Friday night, with both trucks delayed for more than an hour by an accident further along the route.

All I can say is that in five weeks we head south to Cagnes sur Mer. That promises to be quite an expedition, too, but I’m definitely ready.

Turfani runs in the 1,900-meter handicap on Saturday, unfortunately in the top half, rather than the second division, of the race. She would have been perfectly placed in the second division, but after the cut she ended up bottom weight in the first. This is bad for a few reasons: I’ve had to change jockeys to accommodate the light weight of 52 kilos and the competition is much tougher here. In the second division, all the horses who were already eliminated and hold a priority entry got in, so the competition is much easier. I can’t do anything about it now, so we’ll have to make the best of it. Now we just need the snow to hold off so we can get there.

George, Timelord and Shinko will all hit the road Friday for Deauville. Timelord and George are in the same 1,900-meter claimer – we’re hoping for a dead heat for victory. That will be a bit of a stretch for George – it’s not the best entry for him, but as usual, there are way too many horses looking for a race and we have to take what comes. I’d have preferred him in the handicap on Saturday, but he was No. 110 on the list, so obviously would get eliminated. He is in great form at the moment and needs the run, so off we go. He is rated 26 and is up against horses in the 30s (including Timelord, who is rated 33 at the moment), but he is working well so you never know. Shinko, meanwhile, is top weight in his handicap, carrying a whopping 62 kilos. That said, bottom weight is 57.5 kilos, so it’s definitely a race for heavyweights. He has a good draw – No. 10 of 16, which will let him go to the lead on the outside. Greg Benoist is up, and he hasn’t won a race for me yet this year, so it’s time. I’m putting sheepskin cheek pieces on (the French call them “Australian blinkers”) just to remind him to get down to work. He’s had three very easy races with me to try to get a decent handicap mark (unsuccessfully) and now he needs to know it’s time to move.

Weather-wise, we’re in the deep freeze (like much of the rest of the Northern Hemisphere, from what I gather). We’ve been gritting our teeth and trudging down to the fibersand every day. This morning, it was minus 16 Centigrade down there, with the usual north wind whipping across the plain. It was not fun, but now we’ll get to see if it was all worth it.

Central France got a Chicago-style snowstorm yesterday afternoon, which started heavy and wet and then froze solid. The resulting chaos will be talked about for years to come. Drivers faced with even the slightest hill simply abandoned their cars and walked to…who knows where? High school gyms were turned into overnight refugee camps. My friend Louise was stuck for nine hours only about a dozen kilometers from home – so close and yet so far.

On the horse front, nothing was moving this morning, but the all-weather track finally opened for business at 11 a.m. The problem, of course, was getting there. Leaving the horses in their boxes was really not an option, so I did a quick triage of which horse absolutely had to work. Strictly Rhythm colicked last week, so she has to move. Priority. If Timelord doesn’t get out of his box, he will start spinning fast enough to dig a hole to China. Priority. Turfani gets a stiff if left standing around, but she can wait. George tied up the last time he had a day off – he has to go. Blessing Belle and Shinko have no health concerns, so they could have a day off, except that to leave them in for a day would be lethal for whoever had to ride them the next day. So I fired up the truck, and two by two, like Noah’s arc, we saddled them up and trucked them down to the fibersand. The solution is far from ideal – you can warm them up alright, but they never cool down properly because the don’t relax while they’re next to the gallop. But the alternative is worse, so off they go.

The next problem to solve is who goes with who. I decided to put Belle with Timelord for first lot. They both tried to dig a hole in the truck on the way, but beyond that things went pretty well. Next up were Turfani and Strictly Rhythm. Too perfectly behaved ladies compared with the first set. By that time, things were thawing enough to park the truck and ride out normally. Unfortunately, Philippe, my standby rider for Shinko, came limping into the yard to announce that he had blown a rib (or something like that) trying to set up a mash cooker at the yard across the street. His face had turned from its customary pink to a whiter shade of pale, so I knew he was hurting. That left me alone with Shinko and George to contend with. Since taking Shinko (aka the Equine Catapult) out alone would probably be suicidal, I opted for George. He’s not the most courageous of fellows on his own, but he is manageable. He was none too pleased, though, about the huge chunks of snow that were by that time falling off the trees. Nonetheless, we got the work done and came home together, which was the essential thing. That left Shinko with a day off. Tomorrow a thaw is predicted. I hope it’s true, because whoever rides Shinko tomorrow will appreciate a soft landing.

We’ve been dropped into a flash-freezer this week, and if the training center in Maisons-Laffitte wants to plug the whole in its budget deficit, it should start selling tickets to the spectacle down on the all-weather track rather than raise our gallop fees. With most of the tracks and trails impassable, every horse in town has no choice but to head down to the oval. It is 1,450 meters around, which is long enough to get some serious work done, but it is only about 2 meters wide, so at best you can gallop two abreast. There is no room for passing and no room for error. It is prefaced by two all-weather trotting rings. These days, the whole thing resembles a cross between the Barnum & Bailey Circus and O’hare Airport on the day before Thanksgiving without the benefit of an air-traffic controller.

If you hit it during a calm period, things work OK. People watch out for each other. You can warm up on the trotting ring and there’s sort of a cue to get onto to the main gallop. But as anyone who has lived in France knows, the French appetite for cues quickly turns into a mob mentality when there are more than a few people involved. Sort of like at the grocery store, when the woman of a certain age behind you edges ahead with a “oh, I’m just looking at the chewing gum” look, then she drops her shoulder, does the half-turn and miraculously is now in front of you like she’s been there the whole time. With riders busy trying to cut in line and a cold wind sweeping through from the north, the horses are all on their worst behavior. Yesterday, Belle was warming up calmly enough, but decided to get vertical just as we turned to head to the main track. I came off the side, fearful that she was going to turn over again (she has a bit of a history), and luckily there were a couple of people around to help. Today, we had just turned into the trotting ring when I heard a thump behind me; the next thing I knew, a riderless Hi Shinko was next to George, who thought he might take that moment to show how high he could jump, too. Shinko was quickly caught and Philippe remounted, once he got his breath back – he had the misfortune of landing on the frozen sand rather than the all-weather bit. Shinko continued to put on quite a rodeo even with the benefit of Phillippe, who stuck this time, so by the time we had him headed back toward the main track, a load of horses had cut in front of us and went on to hack canter. I yelled at Phillippe to go anyway; I didn’t want to be around to see what would happen if we didn’t get that horse galloped. I was behind him on George, and neither one of us were able to pull up our irons to ride a proper canter – both horses were jumping around too much to even consider it. So off we went, cowboy-style. Phillippe took off like a bullet and I knew I wouldn’t catch him for a decent head-to-head, plus there were too many other horses out on the track anyway. Shinko cleared the way like a bulldozer, and George and Timelord followed in the slipstream.

Turfani and Belle galloped the second lot, which was slightly calmer but not by much. After yesterday’s rearing, I had Seb meet me at the track with a lead rope. Once we trotted a warmup, he picked us up and made sure her front feet stayed on the ground getting onto the main track. Another string of horses had cut in front, but this time they were all over the track instead of in a line. Belle was rolling in her canter with Turfani behind. The problem with the all-weather surface is that you can’t hear the hoofbeats of anyone coming up behind you, so as we rolled up the backside, I just had to scream at the others and hope they would move. Belle’s gallop is straight as an arrow, but she is a huge orange filly who is not particularly maneuverable – think Airbus A380. Once she’s rolling, it’s best just to get out of her way. Eventually, people did, and we managed to get a decent canter, even if it wasn’t exactly what I wanted because there was never room for Turfani to get beside me.

We’re in for four more days of this, and it has now started to snow. At least the canters are out of the way for a few days, so now we can just keep everybody ticking over until the thaw comes, which is promised for Sunday. Until then, it’s fasten your seatbelts, because we’ve definitely entered a zone of turbulence.