The weather has turned colder the last few days with ground frosts in the mornings. The new gallop Harrow has been put to good use to keep the horses working.

This week we ran Newtown Belle and Classical Milano both of which were poor performers.

The mare Newtown Belle is an And Beyond and through breeding was never going to make a Bumper horse, although you always hope you have an exception to the rule!!

She gallops well and is a fine specimen of a mare to the eye. History shows that she will need time to mature and come into her own in staying hurdles in the future. We will now begin teaching her the hurdling game. She settled very well in the race, which may have been party to the fitting of the hood, which was a huge improvement from the boil over, first time out at Hexham.

Classical Milano made his chase debut, on soft, tacky Going, which we knew would not suit but didn’t quite realise how much he would hate it.

He left the paddock and instantly struggled to go on the surface and was seen to be almost paddling. He jumped very well and pulled up along the back side the final time. He has now qualified himself to run in handicap chases, so the run was not a complete loss. We will now wait with him and will not be tempted to run him unless the ground is good. He performed every time he ran last season, and this was on a good surface.

Grays Choice has left us to join Henry Oliver and we wish him the best of luck. We will always have a soft spot for the big lad, we were there to help pick him out as a three-year -old, Jonathon broke him in and Debbi was deposited by him over a fence or two by him!! He ran some great races for us in his Bumpers, winning one for us at Ayr and I hope he overcomes his problems and regains that level of form once again.

Our horses are all very well, but all seem to have their individual niggles which we are working tirelessly to get to the bottom of.

We all need to keep reminding ourselves that ‘Form is Temporary, but Class, Skills and Experience are Permanent. Horses and people don’t lose their ability, they just have problems preventing them from regaining that level, and our time is spent solving those problems… It takes time to regain form levels once again. We have all seen this time and time again is our industry with trainers seeing a poor run, such as Donald McCain a few seasons ago and then this season he is back with an almighty bang, doing very little wrong and having winners left, right and centre. We will get back to into the Winners Enclosure and we will remember all the lessons we have learnt to get there.