Monday 21 February

Good bits, bad bits and wet - just about sums up the last 3 days. Friday Stuart took 2 unraced fillies to Fakenham for their mares bumper, Silver Wren, by Silver Patriarch out of Willow Wren, and a half sister to Troglodyte,Rock Wren and Genny Wren is a long term prospect and ran a satisfactory race on debut, travelling well until lack of experience and match sharpness took their toll. Honeycreeper (by Sir Harry Lewis) was the surprise!She shows nothing at home, but is very very tough and battled really well under Mark Bradburne to finish fourth. Both have come out of their races OK. Sadly the forecast rain arrived overnight and long into Saturday morning, which made for a very wet morning on the gallops, and was not doing anything for Ogees chances at Ascot. Plenty of rider outers meant that lots of horses were out first lot. Bobby Gee worked very well with Omaruru, and Willow Wren and Lureyno also worked well. Kikos went out for his walk and trot first lot and looks well. Grey Bobby is only being ridden every other day to see if he will relax a bit and put some flesh on. After breakfast it was decided that the best thing to do was to take Ogee to Ascot and see what the ground was like there. The heavy rain as we travelled down the M1 didn't fill us with confidence, and inevitably after the first race it was deemed too soft for Ogee and he was withdrawn. Still, it was a nice lunch! While at Ascot we received word that Bobby Gee was not quite right after his good piece of work, and the vet was called. He seemed to be lame behind, and the vet x-rayed him, and carried out other tests. The results were inconclusive, but Bobby was quite sore, and was given pain relief. When we got back Stuart had a look at him and said that he thought the problem was with his hock. Bobby was a lot more comfortable yesterday, and there is definite soft tissue swelling around the hock, so further tests will be carried out on this in a few days. So disappointing - just as Bobby was getting going! he will not be running this weekend,so any hope of winning the Eider Chase have gone out of the window. Hopefully he will be back next season!