At the start of the year, I set a target of 1,000 points to win the Trainers Championship. I don’t think we will get there, but hopefully we might have enough points in the bag to get us home with a few more competitions to go.

I am quite competitive and set out every year to get as close as we can. It isn’t simply about spending huge amounts of money to buy lots of expensive dogs.

I would say that the majority of our better open racers cost an average of around £5,000 each. You can’t expect to get them for any less. They cost the breeders about £2,000 to get to the track.

Evanta Evita was £5,000, and won a £5,000 final and lots of other decent races. I think Evanta Fantasy was between £3-4,000 and I had Adageo Bob for sale on my website for weeks at £8,000 before he was finally sold for £6,000 and then promptly won an £8,000 competition.

We are reliant on top breeders and have a very good relationship with Ian Greaves. He sold us Domino Storm for £4,000. I would also rely on people like Karol Ramsbottom, Gary Goulden and Denis Wilson.

Sometimes it will be people just keeping an eye open for a decent dog; somebody like Jimmy Fenwick of Michael Whyte.

To do well in the Trainers Championship you need a variety of dogs for different distances. You are never going to win it with individual winners of small opens. You would need hundreds of them. The points come in the big competitions, often just getting points for decent positions in big finals.

I am very proud of our strike rate, particularly since we are often asked to provide extra runners to fill faces, which I am happy to do if I can. I would always want to be around the 28-30% mark.

This year, we lacked a few Derby quality dogs, but I am hoping we have one in Roswell Iceman, who raced in Ireland as Holycross Johnny.

He is the most expensive dog that we have had in the kennel for a while and great credit to Evan Herbert for bringing him here. The dog has gone very well in trials at Towcester and I am very excited about him.

 

I was delighted for the owners to see Do It For Twiggy add the Kent Derby to his Yarmouth Derby.

The dog was here for a while and reached the final of the Produce Stakes. At that stage we thought he would be a stayer but he was beaten by some of our other dogs and it didn’t really happen for him.

He went lame and picked up the cough, and basically we just didn’t have a lot of luck with him. But credit to Erica Samuels and I wish them the best for the future.

 

I was pleased to hear that Newcastle have increased the prize money for their opens from £20 to £40 for the also-rans and have backdated it.

It will come in handy given that the clutch on the van went at 4am on the way back home from Newcastle last week. The bill is £780.

But we’ll be back this weekend and I am looking forward to it.

 

Position Trainer Points W R % TPM
1 M A Wallis 821 210 735 29% £109,670
2 P W Young 511 125 886 14% £100,110
3 K R Hutton 460 159 565 28% £70,125
4 P J Rosney 439 71 299 24% £74,340
5 B Draper 319 100 353 28% £66,995
6 S A Cahill 300 78 359 22% £48,800
7 D Childs 281 53 227 23% £41,380
=8 E T Parker 256 104 418 25% £47,825
=8 H Keightley 256 40 100 40% £28,865
10 E Mcnair 252 52 138 38% £33,235
11 J Wright 237 53 164 32% £29,855
12 K P Boon 223 35 234 15% £31,900
13 C R Lister Obe 222 106 417 25% £40,420
14 R J Holloway 169 51 269 19% £33,315
15 J G Mullins 160 43 254 17% £31,295
16 D P Firmager 153 32 155 21% £26,950
17 K A Macari 147 13 52 25% £20,180
18 J W Reynolds 146 62 262 24% £32,585
19 A M P Collett 129 39 240 16% £21,050
20 D D Knight 119 34 160 21% £20,325