“Gary is going to come back and everything will fall into place. That’s why he has a full head of hair and I am bald.”
Wimbledon’s popular assistant racing manager Owen Winkley has been manning the ship during the racing office’s most difficult fortnight ever – an identical time-span to racing manager Gary Matthews’ annual leave.
Last Friday the track was unable to stage a meeting and ran 15 races on the Saturday. This week the Friday card is six races.
Owen said: “We always knew that this was inevitable with Tony Taylor having left with a big kennel strength and Ray Butler gradually running down his numbers.
“But I am hopeful we are slowly turning the corner. June Harvey has another 13 trialling in this week and I would expect the opens to start to fill from next weekend.
“We only had two runners for each open this weekend, but the whole country is in a similar situation, as Yarmouth discovered with their SKY meeting. It is particularly irritating because there are dogs not getting runs when races don’t fill.
“But with the Leger due to start shortly (October 24), I would think we will start to fill the opens and life will get back to normal. Gary will stroll back and wonder what all the fuss has been about.”
