Wednesday 2 April

Sorry for the delay in the update - Duty calls!! Sunday showed us the ups and downs of racing!! Benefit Cut was superb - this very exciting horse jumped off in front, and never saw another rival, winning by half a length. Once again the ultra confident Sam Twiston Davies got a great spin off of him, and came back into the winners enclosure beaming having bagged his 100th winner of the season, at a track, where on his own admission - 'he is not very good at'!! Seemed OK to me!! This had been the plan since we aborted the Cheltenham mission, and the plan is now still very much on track to go to Punchestown with him. On the way back in I asked STD if he would travel to Ireland to ride him and his response was 'Please don't leave without me'!! I think he is keen on him! Later in the afternoon we ran San Telm, who we really fancied to run a big race - but unfortunately we could not get regular pilot Josh Moore for the ride as he had to ride his fathers Leo Luna (who became a non runner, but only after we had saddled San Telm), so we opted for Ryan Hatch. Unfortunately, he and ST just did not see eye to eye and the game was up after the first. Luckily no harm seems to have been done, and ST will go again this season if we get some soft ground for him. Both horses seem fine. More good news is that Dawn Commander, who has been having a slightly easier time of things since a dirty scope a couple of weeks ago scoped very clean yesterday morning, and after another week of cantering his work will step up again. I had pencilled in a race in Haydock at the end of the month, but the calendar has changed and the race I had in mind has been dropped to allow for the running of the Grass Roots final over 2m 4f. So we will have a rethink as to where to aim him - he is in super form.