I arrived back from holiday on Tuesday and it has been pretty full on ever since.
Some people don’t seem to think greyhound trainers deserve a holiday but it was great to spend a few days with the kids. I think I saw more of them during our week in Spain than I have in the last six months.
But it was badly needed. I worked out that prior to the holiday I had gone 44 consecutive days without a day off.
We are now looking forward to the Betfred Select Stakes with Domino Storm on Tuesday. To be honest, I hadn’t really thought about entering her until Dave Baldwin (GM) asked if I had anything in mind. Then it transpired that she was one of the unanimous votes along with her big brother Swift Hoffman.
I can’t even remember the last time we had a runner in the event, and we have certainly never won it.
The draw hasn’t worked out ideally, even with the race deduced to five runners (T1 Swift Keith, T2 Domino Storm, T3 Eden The Kid, T4) vacant T5) Swift Hoffman, T6) Viking Jack) because ideally I would like our bitch drawn on the inside of Swift Keith. But she has the ability to be a lid pinger and with her blistering early, she could easily lead up on the inside.
The thing is, she stays well too. She will eventually go the short six bends and we have the Champion Stakes in mind in the longer term.
I was disappointed that Towcester weren’t able to fill any of their TV Trophy trialstakes on Saturday. We entered three and I thought they may even duplicate the races.
Our potential runners are all unexposed over true marathon distances. Probably the outstanding candidate is Ribble Atom who has won over 750 and Romford and I am convinced she will stay. We also have Ferryforth Fran who has good winning form over six bends at Hove and a new bitch from Ireland called Sosaidhs Blue. She is only a skinny little thing but has 41.80 at Shelbourne Park and can clearly run.
We also have the £10,000 bitch’s race at Towcester – the Lowther Stakes – coming up. All our best bitches are supressed to enable them to contest competitions of that quality.
There have been a few coming and going in recent weeks. Every so often you need to freshen up the kennel and we have moved on the likes of Vanfrankie and a couple of the Evantas.
We have quite a useful outlet in Brian Thompson at Belle Vue and I like the dogs to go when there is still some decent racing in them.
We have had six pups recently join the strength and there are another couple trialling in.
I also have seven pups available for sale on the website. They are due in from breeder Ian Greaves and he thinks a lot of them.
How many of the new dogs will make into top open class is anybody’s guess, buy they will all get treated the same.
Different kennels operate in different way. I know some trainers put their top open racers on a different food from the graders but that just strikes me as wrong.
The way I see it, the owners of all the runners pay the same kennel bills, so why should they get treated any differently?
