EPDS Racing Welfare BTO Results - 3

Today was the third leg of the EPDS Racing Welfare best turned out series at Carlisle, it was also mothers day so the clever chaps at Racing Welfare were asking people to nominate their mum to help judge the competition.  This apparently proved very popular and although I don't yet know the name of the mum in question she did a very good job by all accounts.


The results were as follows:


1st Chrissi Cameron - Barry Murtagh's yard
2nd - Venetia Williams yard
3rd - Dianne Sayer's yard


We are trying to get the name of the grooms that came second and third and as soon as we have that we will update the blog.  A photo of the winning groom Chrissi:

As you can see from the photo the weather was beautiful at Carlisle today if a little cold.


The league table is now:

15pts - C E Longsdon

15pts - R Dickin

15pts - B Murtagh

15pts - V Williams

10pts - W Greatrex

10pts - K Bishop

 5pts - M Appleby

 5pts - D Sayer


Venetia Williams' yard moves up to joint first place with 15 points after their second place today, they are so far the only yard to place in more than one of the legs so they are the one to watch next time at Ludlow on 5th April.  The remaining dates in the series are:


Ludlow- April 5th, Fakenham- May 27th, Stratford- June 2nd, Worcester- July 31st, Bangor on Dee- August 31st, Market Rasen- September 29th, Fontwell- October 6th, Wetherby- November 17th,Wincanton – December 6th (Finale) 

Another EPDS Road Trip

Friday saw EPDS HQ on the road for another of our little trips, as usual we set ourselves a gruelling schedule particularly as stop one was a visit to see the girls at Simon Earle's and step two involved the M25.


First stop was the yard to see Shilpa, Amazon and Poppy.  Shilpa was just coming back from a hack with Luke, she is hacking out quite well on her own now and Luke reported that she was fine with her feet, she was a little sweaty so they had obviously had a bit of a canter which was good.  Chris Keable had been over to the yard earlier in the week and agreed with what the rest of us thought, the breakover needs to come back a bit, which it will in time, but otherwise they were pretty good.  Amazon was looking great, she has the most amazing feet it is such a shame that she never got to run barefoot on the racecourse.  We have pretty much got our plans sorted out for her, more news to follow shortly.  Poppy was on the horse walker when we arrived warming up before doing a bit of work on the lunge and then loose in the school.  She was slightly distracted by a small grey pony that was turned out in the paddock next door, I think she thought it was going to eat her which is a bit weird because she is stabled next door to it at the moment.  It was great to see her move and she is starting to get a really good relationship with Simon which is fantastic.  They finished the session with a bit of loose follow my leader and then she stood patiently for about five minutes with Simon's arm thrown over her back while he chatted to us.  Simon thinks it is really important that horses can just stand a chill for a bit, she has got quite a busy mind so this is a good lesson for her to learn.

After a quick cup of coffee at the yard and a late breakfast in our local Little Chef we were heading back the way we came to get on the M25 to head over to Horsham.  First stop was Moorcroft Thoroughbred rehabilitation centre, we are looking for a horse charity to support along the lines of our relationship with Racing Welfare.  Moocroft was suggested to us by a trainer in Lambourn so we wanted to pop in and have a look and introduce ourselves.  They have great facilities, they really believe in educating horse owners about the training required when taking on an ex-racehorse and their courses are very popular with both TB and other breed owners.  John and I were both impressed with the professionalism of the centre and the horses looked great.


From there we went over to the Racehorse Sanctuary, this is a small charity that has recently moved in to a yard that Graham and Sue have spent many years sorting out to make it suitable.  There is still some planned work to be done but the most important bits, eg the bits for the horses are in place.  We met Moorcroft Boy, it's hard to believe he is 27, he doesn't look it at all and still enjoys having a bit of a hooley in the paddock.  We met all the horses in the sanctuary and enjoyed greatly the stories about their past careers and what their personalities are like now.


Next stop was over to see George Gorman, George is the apprentice jockey that EPDS sponsors, at only 16 he recently had his first race under rules coming second to Barbers Shop who is trained by Nicky Henderson and owned by the Queen.  George showed us around the yard and we met all the horses including one who George thinks a lot of but unfortunately he isn't a happy traveller.  George now spends 30 minutes hacking him to the gallops and there is some plan for him to do a point to point at their local course which is only two miles away from their yard, I can't imagine many horses get hacked to a race meeting nowadays.  George is hoping he gets to keep the ride, I'm sure he will but maybe only to the course .........!  While we were there George showed us the reply of his race which was the first time I had seen it, I reckon George must be wearing the digi recorder out he must have played it so many times.


After leaving George we headed in to Horsham town centre to meet my friend Sally and go to my favourite chinese in the UK, the China Brasserie.  Unfortunately for John China Brasserie believe in making their spicy food quite spicy and John doesn't like too spicy so we got to stuff our faces while he looked on.  Sally is a riding instructor in her spare time so she has agreed to give John a lesson on her horse soon, should be interesting as Candy is a part bred Andalucian highly trained to weight aids.


We got home about midnight absolutely exhausted but full of plans for the future so it was a great day.